


Animal Behavior

by lettered



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Memories, Mind Games, Porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-03-23
Updated: 2003-04-28
Packaged: 2017-10-10 01:54:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 20
Words: 51,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/93927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettered/pseuds/lettered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Complete AU. Logan and Marie are Stryker's lab rats, nearly stripped of humanity. Later, they meet again and make some attempts to reclaim it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue, part 1

**Author's Note:**

> The premise for this AU belongs entirely to jjblazer, from her fic, [The Cell](http://www.wolverineandrogue.com/fic/dbfiction.php?fiction_id=2053). The concept was used with her permission.
> 
> This was originally posted at the DDFH W/R Yahoo! Group under the pen name Moswen (len).

He told himself that he had been a normal man. He hadn't had the best lifestyle--he hadn't had the fuck-me trophy wife with the 'you're fucked' trophy car and the suburban house with a membership to the country club--but then again, what normal man did? He hadn't really had a home, but he'd had places to crash, people he knew, some of which he even bother to talk to, women he fucked, some of which he almost even cared for. He wasn't a saint; he was probably a little rough with them from time to time. He probably stole--not when he had to but precisely when he had nothing better to do. He knew he'd drunk--because there was an idea somewhere in him that amber liquid might be able to drown him when he knew nothing could kill him--and he'd probably drunk too much on more occasions than was good for him.

But it wasn't like he'd ever killed anyone. It wasn't like he'd ever raped or pillaged or set fires or started wars. Leave that to the government, bub.

He told himself this because to believe less was to be already beaten. To believe more--that he might have been a good man, even an honorable man--was to believe that God was not only dead but rotting in Hell in a prison twice as fucking terrible as his own.

He did not believe in God, not now, but maybe that's why he'd convinced himself that he'd been like other men. He held on to that, to that belief that he was human. They'd taken away everything else--including his humanity--but they hadn't taken away the belief, that single leap of faith, that he had once been a man.

They'd even taken his name. He'd laughed when they'd done it--a dry, raspy laugh, but see, he'd been the kind that laughed. To his knowledge, only humans laugh. They laughed when they cut him open--or before, or after, or sometime in the glory of it all, because they were really achieving something, weren't they? And look at the man, the animal, the fearless, scared so bad he was pissing in pants they'd taken off of him so lines could cover his skin.

The name replacement was army issue. He'd known it was military--had to be government, those fuckers--but he hadn't known quite how standard they were going to get. After all, this wasn't exactly greenie recruitment camp. He had wondered at one time just how much the government actually did know about what went on here. They'd probably just given free reign to this big guy with the cultured voice and the face he never saw.

Said voice had laughed, too. "Yes, funny. Do you want to know what they're for?"

"I don't give a shit. Get me the fuck outta this cock-sucking piece of--"

"Tsk, language, Wolverine." The voice always called him Wolverine--the name on the tags, instead of the last couple of digits of the number, like the scientists.

He hated it, of course. The numbers just reduced him to a nonentity--one among thousands, probably, but he preferred that to being called--humorously, with a hint of affection, almost--the name of an animal. He spit a tooth, aiming for the eye in the face of a disembodied voice, but he just heard it rattle to the floor and gingerly felt the inside of his mouth with his tongue, where the new tooth was almost already grown.

They'd beat him up pretty good--numerous times--knocking teeth around and breaking bones, but his healing factor had taken care of most of it. It was a problem with broken bones, though, because, as with the tooth, sometimes something else--bone splinters, mostly--was in the way and bones didn't set right even as they began to heal. "Something has to be done about that, first on the agenda," the voice had said, when they first brought him in, wounds already healing up, but bones healing crookedly and tooth aching because a new one was trying to grow in under the one that had been almost ripped out of his mouth, but not quite.

After having the crap kicked out of him more times than he quite cared to count, they put him in a metal room whose walls he couldn't even begin to bend or break. He'd found these around his neck, and, after a while, laughed hoarsely, only to hear an echoing laugh, and this voice. "Do you want to know what they're for?" the voice had asked again. "Soldiers wear them into war and battle. Perhaps you've head of them? Dog tags," the voice had elaborated, and chuckled. "The army does have a sense of irony, Wolverine, although perhaps you are too distracted just now to see it. The dead and animals are sometimes only recognizable for what they wear around their necks."

The voice paused, and he could hear a smile in it. "There are animals, Wolverine, which are a class below humans, and then there are mutants, a class below the animals. I will show you this. I will treat you like the animal you are and you will react like one, and you, too, will come to understand what you really are."

"Not bloody likely, you little mother fu--"

The voice interrupting had been calm, smooth. "You stink of mutation. I would know that smell miles away. However, some people's senses are not as finely attuned as yours and mine, and they will need those tags. You see Wolverine, if we mangle your body beyond even its ability to repair, we'll need the tags to recognize you and record the number in our files. No one else, of course, will have even cared that you once existed."

Perhaps it was that, more than beatings and namelessness; more than endless, shameful laboratory tests; more than no clothes, no utensils when they bothered to feed him, no urinals and no baths except when they decided to clean him for more tests--perhaps it was the fact that no one actually cared, that served to chip away his humanity. The idea of no one knowing, no one really caring, no one remembering that you were once a man makes you less and less of a man every day.

He lives naked in a closed metal box that stinks of his own pain, filth, blood, and sweat. There is a slot that opens for food; there is an impenetrable door that opens and pulls him out for more tests. He never knows the time of day. He has forgotten everything, except the idea that maybe, once, he was like other, normal men, and he hadn't lived like this before, and he doesn't deserve this now. He doesn't care that they think he is an animal and treat him like one. He was a man. Was, is. The line was becoming less sure. Soon, even that will be gone.

This is what he is thinking when they bring her in. The door opens, and he is huddled in the corner, squinting in dim light and begging, please, to die. They throw in this little pile of limbs. And, if there is any kind of Lord, please forgive him this--his next thought is that he is very, very hungry, and if this fresh, living smell is meat he will kill it and eat it raw if he has to. He doesn't care any more that these animalistic actions will amuse the voice, prove it right. He is starving.

Then he realizes that the creature that they have released into his cell is human--well, at least she's got two legs, two arms, and a navel. She's also got dark, tight curls hiding herself, breasts, rather full, and a mouth made for sex. And so the next thought follows hard upon the rest, Lord have mercy for this as well: woman.

God, how long has it been?

He must have been a normal man, because suddenly he was remembering things he had thought he'd forgotten. The idea of 'woman' is like the idea 'whiskey' had been when not two months ago, when he'd caught the word whispered among the scientists and he'd remember that it was something that could warm him and make him forget. 'Woman' makes him feel the same way--warm, creamy thighs parting for his entry and nails scratching down his back pulling him inside of a soft tightness that sometimes, almost, felt safe; sucking on rough nipples and making them rougher and rougher until he came deep inside of the warm, wet place and his entire body, almost, for a moment, found peace.

He shakes his head, trying to reconcile warm, wet, humid thoughts with this creature before him. His arousal dies as he looks at her again, but he is not ashamed that she has seen it. It doesn't really matter any more.

She really is only arms legs and navel, now that he looks again. She's huddled away from him, eyes huge and hungry, wasting away: the ribs are poking out already; the cheeks are sunken, which, he is sure, is the only factor making those lips look so generous and completely fuckable. She may not have been in the place long at all, but she's definitely of the place; she's so dirty that he is surprised he even noticed the rest. Except, different from him, no tags, and they seemed to have given her the dignity of clothes. Maybe it's because she's a woman--she's got this gauzy thing-- on second thought, it doesn't afford much dignity at all: almost completely transparent and not big enough to cover all of her.

He is just standing there, pressed up against the wall in horror, staring at her like that. At last she speaks from her corner to his. "They said you could do it."

It has been a long time since someone has spoken to him, instead of at him, or instead of about him as if he wasn't there. The voice--the precise voice, the main voice, the hated voice, had talked to him only in the beginning. Now the voice only laughed; now it did not need to goad any more, because its project really had turned into an animal. But the animal finds his own voice, locked deep somewhere next to the idea that he was a man, closely connected to his grunts and screams and groans from when they experiment on him. "Do what?"

"They said you were . . . creative." She blinks up at him from where she sits, her limbs a little puddle on the floor.

"Creative? Do what?" The question is harsher now. This is really, all he can ask. He doesn't know who she is or what she is there for, but it seems so simple to ask her: what could I possibly do? What do I possibly have to do in this world, that has anything to do with you, or anyone else?

Her eyes are wide as she stares up at him. It strikes him that he had not seen a face like that in a very long time. In fact, he is not sure he had ever seen a face like that, even before this place. Her whole face is open, earnest, almost as if she trusts him, almost as if her eyes beseech him and her lips tumble pleas. He knows, suddenly, why she looks so strange. She is a child, not more than sixteen. "They said you knew what I was for."

"What are you for?" he asks solemnly, because that is all there was to know. That, and: "Do what?"

This last time seems to strike her, and she trembles violently for a moment, and draws the gauze around her, as if it can cover her. "Get me with child."

"No," he says simply, and turns away, refusing to even contemplate what she has just said.

"No." No to the idea of them proving that he is an animal, screwing whatever piece of meat they throw in here, no to submitting to whatever their purposes are and no to this woman, whatever her ulterior purposes are.

"No," he says again, louder this time. He remembers that she is a child and he stays turned away as all the hot thoughts come rushing back into him tenfold, and this third time he is saying no to his own urges, not to what she says and not to the idea of it. He is saying no to the idea that her body is womanly even if her face is not, to the idea that there is a pair of thighs behind him waiting for him to get between them, to the idea that it has been so long and that he wants it so bad. He is saying no to the fact that he has grown hard at the mere idea of entering this child, at the idea of entering anything, at this point. It has been so long. He is less than an animal--he had even forgotten about sex, until they throw this sack of bones in here and she makes him harder than a randy teenager with a real woman instead of a dirty magazine.

"No," he is howling it now, and she is crying.

"Please," she says, and her breath catches in a hiccup.

"Why?" This, too, is all he can ask. How can she want this with him? How can she want a child in this place? Why ask this of him? Why are they letting her?

"Because if you don't," she says at last, voice dull, "they'll kill me."

His mind has grown slow with thinking only these things: out, escape, hunger, food, rage, anger, hate, pain, pain, painpainpain and I was once a man. It has taken him a while to understand this new idea, but now he does. He understands what this is, what this place had become.

He knew somewhere that they were making him into a weapon, that they were using his mutation for some purpose of their own to do something or other. The faceless voice may be interested in making him understand his true self worth, but the scientists were interested in giving him some worth by making him their tool. Their completely manipulatable, usable tool. And now they wanted a child. His child--and hers, apparently. It wasn't just a place of pain and production of a weapon--now it was a place of reproduction, too. Now it was a breeding ground, and apparently, he was the stud. "So what's with you?"

"My skin. It--it hurts people."

It wouldn't hurt him, he realized, this dawning on him.

They had told her he could do it. They had told her he was creative. They had told her he knew what she was for--and they were right; he would know. He did know.

He was an animal. What more did animals do besides what they were told, and eat and fuck on the side? He looks at her again, considering--actually considering.

This is when he begins to remember, if only a little, and this is when he gets angry. He remembers that men don't fuck a girl just because someone gives him one to fuck. He remembers that men don't use children to sink themselves into oblivion. "I can't."

She blinks several times. "They said you could. They said it wouldn't hurt you."

"It won't hurt me." Nothing did, but he remembers that men live as equals in a world of human beings, not in this hierarchy of military/scientist/human, to animal, to mutant. He understands that she is his equal in this, even here. She is being used as much as he is. "I can't."

Her eyes widen and slowly, as if she can barely manage to look, her eyes travel from his own down to his nose, his mouth, his neck, his chest, his hips, his raging erection. "You can," she diagnoses at that, and sounds almost petulant.

He turns away from her again, and one last time, "I can't."

"You won't."

"That's right, sweetheart, so take a hike."

"I can't. They won't let me out of here until . . . and if you won't . . . oh please. Please." She does not cry any more; it is just this begging. From the smell of her, she wants this even less than he does--there is no hint of reaction to his primal arousal in her scent, just fear. She reeks of fear--so scared, she'd left a puddle on his floor as they'd thrown her in. And still, she's begging him for it.

He is convincing himself, with these sudden memories, that he had been a man, once. He would stand up to them this time, in this one thing, and it would make him a man. He had tried resisting them in the beginning, but it had only brought new dimensions of pain he hadn't known existed. At first, it had been easier to give in, and then as everything that had made him a human began to leave him, it had just seemed natural. But if, far from now, they continued that torture of submission--he would know he'd refused them this one thing. He would know he wasn't all animal, hadn't always been all animal. He would know he had a free will, which is what makes a man a man.

"Darlin'," he says, because somehow he remembers that it is a sort of nice name, and the smell of her fear makes him want to retch. He wants her not to be afraid, and then he wants her to get the hell out. "Don'tcha see what they're tryin' ta do to us? I can't let them. I can't. I won't."

She looks up, hair tangled and covering painfully bony shoulders. "I want to live," she says simply, and that breaks him.

Her desire is so good, so pure, so untarnished by everything here. She has seen deep into the very bowels of viciousness and cruelty, and still she wants to live. She has seen this place and seen him and seen what he is, and still she is willing to take him inside of her--just to live. Even willing to grow a new life inside of her--in order to live. Her desire is completely unreasonable, completely thoughtless, completely ridiculous--but completely innocent. He thinks he remembers what this irrational thing is called: hope.

He wants her desire to live. It has been so long since he has desired it for himself.

He wants to believe that a hope, an innocence, a purity like hers exists in the world, even when he is deep down in this dark place. He wants to be able to think of it when they torture him. He wants to create life inside of her, a child of this hope, and think of the child and its new chance at life and innocence, even as he screams in his daily agony. He knows it is impossible--he knows that a child born in this place will be anything but innocent--but he wants the hope of it. He wants to stir her hope into a flame, and make the fire consume him, to protect him from the world. She is here, wanting, even wanting him--because she has to--and oh, it is too much to bear. He does not recognize his own choked voice: "Okay."

Her fear increases tenfold, but she does not scramble away, nor does she make any sound of fear. "Good," she says simply, and her voice does not even tremble. She stands, clutching the gauze tightly, but no longer trying to cover herself with it. Uncovering huge brown eyes and a wide mouth, she shakes back her hair, looking--despite bony shoulders--strong, like a lioness, accepting its mate. She is steady, takes one step toward him--two--and then she is almost touching him.

Her slim body is swaying slightly, and with little breaths of her, he can't help but become aroused again. Beneath all the filth her skin is a milky white; despite the shallow ribs her breasts still yearn to be touched; despite her sunken stomach her hips are full and begging to be bucked against him. But he wants not just this, and now, not even just her hope--but her strength, the way she walks toward him, the way she does not reveal her fear except in scent.

"You will have to show me," she says finally, after he stands for many moments silently staring down at her. "I've never done it before. I don't know how."

Then the answering fear begins to mount in him as well. He had not thought of that. He had not begun to think how hard this would be. Darlin'--baby. Mine, sweet, child, beautiful, cherished, youth, innocence, hope.

She has awakened in him what truly makes a man a man--not free will, as he had thought, as he had desired, as he had tried to exercise. It is only this: pity.

He moves one hand toward her cheek, and almost imperceptibly, as she is trying to control her fear, she jerks away. "I ain't gonna hurt ya, kid." They are the gentlest words he can find.

"It's not that. It's just that when people touch my skin, something happens. People get hurt."

He shakes his head, and touches her.

A few moments later, when he is on his knees and she is frantically hovering about him, asking him if he is alright, he decides it was worth it. He hadn't thought she'd hurt him, because of the healing factor, but apparently, she has one pretty powerful mutation. Which is why, apparently, they want them to mate. But it was worth it nevertheless, because he realizes how long it's been since bare flesh has touched his own, and hers is soft, and sweet, and almost tempting enough to touch again.

"I told you not to do that," she huffs, and he wants to laugh as he has not laughed in so long, because she almost sounds untouched, still a child: her voice is almost the petulant whine of an 'I told you so.'

He gets to his feet and takes the gauze from her. "I can find other ways to touch you," he offers at last, quietly, his eyes darkened and his body ready for her. It is a life-line, a choice, almost. He is giving her the power to refuse--the power to refuse what he can do, the power to refuse that some base part of him desires what will happen next.

Again, she steps toward him. "I am not afraid."

She is lying. He can smell the fear coming off of her in waves.


	2. Prologue, part 2

He does not know how to go about this. Despite the humid thoughts of women he remembers, he thinks he doesn't even know what to do with a woman any more, much less a woman like her, who is barely a woman at all. This, in a way, is all new to him too. But there is one thing working inside of him: the pity for her, for himself, for the two of them, subjected to this animal behavior.

This moves him. Softly, he sinks to his knees. He can be a man in this, too--he remembers that it can be beautiful, what they are to do, that it can never be wrong unless you treat it that way, that a true man has the capacity to make a woman feel good. He can show her that, better than tell her. Hand covered in gauze, he begins to touch her.

"Wait."

Immediately, he waits.

"What's your name?"

He swallows. It seems fitting, somehow, that she should ask him that. He doesn't remember his own name, but he wants to give her one--a man's name. He wants to make one up, just so he can give it to her, just so he can tell her he is a man and that he is not doing this for the reasons they thought he would. He thinks frantically, and the name 'Logan' is the only one that comes to mind. He does not know if that was his name before. He does not know if the name has anything to do with himself, but it's the name he wants to give her. So: "Logan."

"Thank you."

He is kneeling before her, and she stands, her dirty, bruised body rising up before him like something both ancient and young, immense and petite--love and squalor. An oddness rises in his chest, a love not particularly of her but of the something indomitable in the human spirit that makes us stand straight like that when the whole world is pushing down on us, and we become omnipotent in our vulnerability.

He begins at the small of her back, reaching around her to touch her lightly there until she is not shivering with fear and surprise at the touch. He rubs a small, ever widening spiral, and her eyes grow large. This is not what she thought it would be like. This is something her mother used to do, on those sweltering Mississippi days, touching her bare back in the oppressive heat with light touches--before, in those days when people could touch her. Fear trickles through her, because she doesn't know this man and she doesn't know this place and she doesn't know this act they are performing, and she has seen tags with an animal name and number, and she knows she is doomed and she just wants mother and Mississippi again, but his touch is insistent, roaming down the backs of her legs, across her stomach.

His hands grow heavier, his touch powerful, but gentle--completely certain, completely sure, existing as if only to reassure her. It has been so long since anyone touched her. For the first time in months, she feels almost safe. This frightens her too, and so she narrows herself to that touching that is just warm, relaxing, soothing, silken against skin so unused to any kind of contact; she shuts out her questions and her fear and her uncertainty.

He follows her; the touching changes. He touches her ankle, the barest of touches that makes her shiver with surprise. Then he reaches and touches her elbow, a quick stroke that makes her jerk reflexively. The rub of the warm, rough cloth there makes her yearn for the long, soothing strokes, the way he has massaged all her muscles away and made her melt. Now he is at the soft, boneless skin of her throat, light touches, and she wants them to deepen; she wants him to stroke her. The feeling frightens her--but she wants, desperately, to be touched. She has not known the comfort of touch for so long, and he makes it feel so good.

His hands are unpredictable--here, there, making her desire that long, steady touching. She begins to twist into his touch. Part of her wants to cover his hands with her own and make them touch her more, but the rest of her wants him to control the reactions of her body, to let her know that it is alright. She trusts that touch because it trusts her, trusts her skin, and it comforts her; she wants to let the skill and strength in his hands manipulate her into thinking that this is alright, that they will take care of her, that they know what they are doing. She does not move, except to sag against the wall, because her knees have turned to liquid with how he touches her legs.

Yes, he knows what he is doing. Now he runs a fingernail along her inner thigh; now his hands flick into her hair and briefly touch her scalp, then the spot just behind her ear. Now he runs a knuckle along the soft curve of the side of her breast, which produces a little sound in her throat as she hungrily tries to turn into his hands so he touches her where she wants it. This frightens her too, that she wants that kind of touch--but the touching feels good, feels safe, feels right.

She begins to feel the little reactions she thought she'd left behind somewhere back in Mississippi--the little moans, the sighs, the wetness, the throbbing, the yearning and the aching. She feels it and she welcomes it. She had begun to fear that she cannot feel that way, that she is not a woman because she can never treat a man as a man. She writhes under his touch; she aches for him in ways that make her whimper--and yet still, his touch is comfort; his touch is peace, because he touches her as if she is a woman and he is a man. "Logan," she says simply, because she does not know what else to say.

Suddenly the touch is gone, and the gauze is thrown over her mouth. She panics--afraid that she has done something wrong, afraid that they are coming to take her out already, afraid that they won't let Logan take her, afraid that she shouldn't say his name, most of all afraid that he will stop touching her. She begins to speak, and then, through the cloth, she feels his mouth on hers.

His lips are like his hands--surprisingly soft, incredibly warm--and insistent. They move against her closed ones and she unthinkingly reacts as she has been reacting--she tries to twist into his touch, and she unknowingly opens her mouth so she can take more of him. His tongue enters her mouth through cloth--it's hot and full and at first, she wants to spit it out. She feels suddenly violated; she feels suddenly afraid, having this part of him inside of her. This wasn't what she wanted, wasn't what she trusted him to do, wasn't what she--But it is doing such things--strong, hot, worshipful things--to the insides of her cheeks, to the roof of her mouth, to her own tongue, that her fear is smoothed away with the muscle of his mouth, and she accepts that too.

Part of what comforts her in this new way of touch is that she can feel that he wants this; he wants to be inside of her like this. He treats her mouth as if it is something sacred, as if it is prized, as if it is to be cherished. This soothes her. It is not just that he is the only source of warmth in this cold dark place; it is not that he is the only man who has been gentle with her since all those months on the road before this. It is that he is the first person that has ever made him feel like a woman--except David, who just after she kissed him had made her feel like a freak, a monster, an animal, because even as her lips left him his eyes rolled back into his skull and he shook, foaming at the mouth. When his mouth leaves hers she tries to call him back. "Logan--please--"

She vaguely realizes that he must have ripped the cloth in two, because he is still touching her with his hands. She should be afraid, that he could have managed that without her even noticing, but his mouth draws her attention away from her fear again--firm, gentle, and utterly in control. He lifts her easily and places her gently onto the floor, and she barely notices this either. His mouth is sinking; she can feel his hot breath on her, lower, and a jet of cool air--blowing on her here, there, in places she never even knew had nerve endings.

Again, he draws a warmth, a peace, a serenity out of her up to her skin, her hated, untouchable skin, that he touches now with the most deft, most sure, flicks of skillful hands. Her whole existence is his touch; she is formless under it, a shapeless putty that arches and strains and bucks, trying to raise into his unexpected, unpredictable touches created by his fingers and his tongue. He is everywhere at once and in not enough places altogether, a gentle mouth at her nipple or a scrape of teeth against her shoulder, the brush of a hand against her wrist and finally, soft kisses planted between her thighs. She has been mad and wet with want, and now she is lost. "Logan. Logan. Logan--"

He can feel the animal rising in him at the smell of her, at the sight of her body writhing under him, begging him to take her. The animal wants to do her bidding--it wants to take her, to use her, to fuck her, to make her give him what he is giving her: comfort and oblivion. She is incredibly wet; her nipples are incredibly hard; her mouth is incredibly swollen from his kisses, and she is ripe for the taking--and the animal is ready to take. Her skin requires care, but the moments before the pull and the slow drag afterwards would be enough. It has been so long for him that it would be easy to get ready, to touch himself until he can release himself with a single thrust, almost before he enters her, or as he enters her. This is what they have planned; the animal is instinct and reflex, and will work to satiate itself despite the fact that the man and real strength is slipping away into her skin.

But in the end, it is not the animal that has her, but the man. It is the man who has been giving her this pleasure, and it is the man who fills it out, because of the way her eyes snap open to look directly into his, and because of her simple words: "I want you, Logan."

It is the man she wants--not escape, not a child, not her own life. She wants _him_, because of what he has given her, and nothing else will do. That is _his_ name she is calling, as if he is actually a man. He is savagely proud of that fact, prodigiously satisfied by that he did this to her, he made her comfortable with this, he made her accept this, he made her see she wasn't the one in the wrong. In some way it is both the satisfaction of an animal and the satisfaction of the man triumphing over the animal; only man, he thinks, has the capacity to turn something this ugly into something almost beautiful. It is the man she wants. In that moment, at her words, a man he is.

And so he gives her that. His fingers drive her to fall apart, and as she is in the midst of it he brings himself to the edge, and enters her, and it is enough. Her head is still lolled back with pleasure, almost oblivious to the pain of his entry, and his reflexive thrusting shudders to a stop as her skin pulls him.

She feels him inside of her--not just his body but his mind. She feels herself begin to change, feels her skin begin to distort into his image. She scrambles away from him, throwing the cloth between them. She frantically places little kisses through cloth across his back and the cords of his neck, praying that he will wake up. He is passed out on the floor, not breathing, and that's how he is when they come for her, and she is clutching at him through cloth and calling his name, still kissing him, still saying the name of the man, over and over and over again. That is what she is doing as they pull her off of him, using thick, hard cloth and metal to handle her, wrapping her up and taking her away. They beat her, but not too hard, because of the possibility of offspring, and all the while, she is calling his name.


	3. Prologue, part 3

"The girl you took is ruined as a woman. She will not let anyone touch her, even under cloth; because she is so disgusted by it now. The merest touch she finds disgusting, revolting; she says it reminds her of you and all she can do is vomit until she can heave no more. She knows how vile you are, and she hates you and the thing that grows inside of her because of you. She was glad when she thought her skin killed you, and she herself wants only to die. She tried to kill the thing growing inside of her too, and her greatest torment is that we let it live. It defiles her--it is a monster extruded from her womb created by nothing natural, nothing human. The creature is hungry already for our cruelty, for our defilement, for our treatment."

"The girl-child you used? A whore. She touches herself for us. Wants us to rape her again and again and again, as you did. She begs us to touch her, to use her, to abuse her, to fuck her, to get the feel of you off of her. She didn't know why you just didn't get it over with when you took her. She found you repulsive, disgusting; she would have done anything to get the ordeal over with. She was faking it when she called your name, when she said she wanted you. She revels now in the touch of our scientists because it is not your touch. She's had the baby, amidst it all. A ripe, fine healthy little boy. We're going to kill him three days from now, just to hear him squeal. She is glad."

"We wanted you to do it, you know; we wanted you to take her how you took her. It was planned. Why do you think she had the gauze? If we had just wanted you to mate we would have left her without it. We know you would have done it in your own animalistic way--rough, hard, immediate, painful. You would have come inside of her and you would have survived. Instead we wanted you to think you were a man. You actually thought you were helping her? You think a real man would rape her mind, too, make her want it, instead of just making it quick? You think a real man would prolong it like that? She may have gotten over what you did to her body, but how is she going to withstand what you did to her mind? You made her want you and now all she can feel is shame that she asked you to take her, asked you to rape her. But the child--it lives, though it already wants to die. It will be the perfect killing machine, and it will grow to hate its life, hate you, and most of all, hate her who brought her into this world, screaming and crying for you."

"She has forgotten you. She doesn't know the father of her child and she doesn't care. She's lifeless--you took away her womanhood, you took away her livelihood; you took away her hope, and now she has no reason to live. We wanted you to take her slowly, gently, for her sake. And what did you do? You fucked her raw. You just took her. She was barely ready for you. She was only a girl, and you just took her, took her because you're an animal that can't even help himself. Face it, you took one look at that bag of bones and you got hard; you wanted the first thing you saw that was free to take. You wanted to mark her, to take your territory. You wanted yourself inside of her because that's what we wanted. You knew it would please us, and that's why you did it. She lost the baby. So much blood, for such a little girl. She lost it, writhing in her own blood and screaming your name, over and over and over."

He held the thought of her stronger than they thought he would. He replayed the words over and over in his mind: 'I want you Logan. I want Logan. I want _you_. I want you. Logan. Logan. Logan. _Logan. I want you. _' He tried not to forget it; he held on to that moment in his mind in which he was utterly and completely a _man_ again, with someone wanting him for him, for his equality, for his free will, for his compassion. He held onto his name faster and harder then he'd held on to anything in his life; he strained to remember every line of her face--those sweet, wide, innocent eyes, looking up at him, forgetting her pain, forgetting her imprisonment, forgetting her fear, telling him she wanted him and him alone.

They worked again to break him, of course. They had already done their worst--already kept him here for years of torture, already cut him open again and again, already put in hot, searing metal. And yet they measured him and cut him and measured more, drawing lines, drawing pain, drawing confessions of things he had never done: he had raped her; he had tortured her; he had wanted to do it again and again until she was dead with him inside of her.

So in the end it wasn't the pain that made him at last forget entirely that thing they wanted to make him forget most: that he was a man. It wasn't the pain; it was their words. It was these things that they told him. They had done it on purpose, they said. It had all been engineered. Now she was dead; she was a whore; she was ruined; she called his name; she bled; she bore children; she masturbated for their pleasure; she miscarried--and somehow, worst of all, she had forgotten him.

There was shame in that--that her forgetting him was worse to him than her hating him and reviling him, than her ruination or death. It was true, what they said: he wanted his mark on her; he wanted her to hold his name because he could not; he wanted someone in the world to know that he was a man and that he had lived. He wanted to touch another person, to have been touched. It was strange that the person who could do that was a woman who couldn't be touched at all.

They didn't ever give him another woman. They knew he would kill her, and what was the point of that? They would lose a possible brood mother and he would be satisfied that his pity had saved someone, and there would be nothing they could do about it. Instead, to torture him, they whispered these words that crawled like snakes through his ears, until he didn't know what was truth and what were lies.

The idea of her did not leave him. She stayed, twisted, distorted, until he knew that whatever he had been, he had never been a normal man. He had always been an animal. He had always been less than an animal. He had always been sub-human, to be able to do what he had done to that child.

He still wanted her, that was part of what was wrong. They had reminded him of sex and all that it could do and sometimes now it was all he thought of--but he did not bother remembering the countless, faceless women who might have spread their legs before. What he remembered was her. She was the only fantasy that brought him pleasure, and when he began to listen to their words, and learned that he had raped her, used her, pained her, killed her, fucked her--he still wanted her. He wanted her sweet, child-face, her soft, dark eyes, her tumbling hair, her bony little ribs and shoulders, her young breasts and tight virginity, clutching around him as if to save itself this final violation. He wanted the hope and strength that had seemed to shine in her eyes--and he knew he must want it so that he could twist it into something as dark and terrible as himself. He was only an animal, after all. There was nothing more he could want it for.

He did not think of the infant that might have resulted from him taking her. If he did, his thoughts were only to destroy it, to kill it as quickly as possible, to save it this life and this world. It would not be mercy. It would be selfishness, doing to it what he could not do to himself.

In the end, the very end, when all vestiges of humanity were gone, he forgot her. He wrapped her up in his mind and did not let her out. Had he still had the capacity for rational thought he would have said it was because the animal couldn't understand something like what had happened. In his hate, his misery, his despair of that animal inside of him, he would have been right, but not in the way he thought. In the end, the very end, the animal saved him, protected him and protected her, the memory of her, pulled his mind into a darkness so deep he wouldn't be able to remember what had happened and thus damage that spark of light he'd once had.

* * *

_Weight of Portent chapter 3_

 

"This is it."

"Where are we? I thought you were going to take me as far as Laughlin City."

"This is Laughlin City."

She squinted and tumbled out, pulling her bag with her. In the process, her hood pulled back a little, revealing two locks of white hair. The trucker watched, eyes narrowing, as she hastily pulled up her hood again. His eyes then fixed on her gloves--not cold weather gloves but fancy gloves, made so the fingers could move agilely--but her eyes steadily met his. He shrugged. It wasn't his concern. He was rid of her now.

She followed him into the only alive structure in town--the smoky, ill-lit bar, with buzzing neon lights and out-of-date posters advertising various types of alcohol. The twang of music was lost in the crowd--a boisterous, sweaty, smoky crowd, pressing in against a cage that was almost blue with empty smoke and haze. She wondered if this was what she was searching for. Marie had been searching for what seemed like all her life.

She was drawn into herself, assaulted by several minds that attempted to beat back her soul and gain control. With so many people inside her, she had not even begun to try to deal with individual people on the outside--in every sense of the word, she was unable to touch others, unable to reach out. She could never get too close; she could never grow to care too much; she could never show herself too much--skin might brush skin; minds might brush minds, and people she almost cared for would learn who and what she was and hate her for it.

Marie had been searching, all these years, for a touch.

Her first thought, six years ago, when they took her away from him, was that she shouldn't have let him take her. If it had been any other, she would have let him, so she could live. But this man had been so utterly and completely selfless, gentle--kind, even. He'd done it because she'd asked him to, not because he'd been willing to, and he'd made it as good for her as possible.

She had killed him for it, just for the hope of his seed so that perhaps she could live, and selfishly, just for that touch of his skin inside of her. She'd cursed her skin and she cursed herself and most of all, she had cursed Logan, who she believed she had killed. Her hair had whitened with his age and she had so much of his pain and rage inside of her that she had wanted to die.

She had hidden that part of him within herself as she had hid all the others, unable to bear this particular mind's pain just as she had been unable to bear the product of that single heinous act, losing it early in puddles of too much blood. The child had never lived; the man was dead; and through it all, she still hoped to live, and despised herself for it.

A possibility haunted her, and in some ways, a new hope had driven her. They wouldn't have given her to him if they thought he could die so easily. They wouldn't waste him like that. Besides--how to kill him? He was invincible. He might--perhaps--still be alive. But directly after her conception they had transferred her to another facility, and shortly after her miscarriage, she had escaped in the confusion of this second holding place shutting down--in no official way; military officials and scientists scattering like cockroaches in sudden light, leaving their subjects to their own devices. Perhaps someone had exposed the atrocities taking place in bases like that, but she never quite knew what had happened, and had no idea what might have happened to the first base, whether it still stood, whether he was still there.

She had absolutely nothing to go on, and yet she searched. It was not merely lost hope and willful innocence; she was less naïve now, more street-wise. She had learned a measure of strength and control, dealing with the other minds in her head--both physically and mentally. She knew how to deal with men when they approached her, and, for good measure, she could almost make them not approach her at all. She knew how to steal and live hand to mouth and drop a place and job at the whisper of a word--or hint of the name she was looking for. She worked here and there, had friends, almost, who tried to look out for her even as what they called wanderlust struck her and made her move on, ever away from anything she could become too close to, always away from a place she might begin to love.

Despite her good sense and ability to take care of herself, she was driven by this need to search for him. It was only when she thought of his touch that she felt like herself. In these upper reaches of Canada she was a child to be looked after, a thief that slipped in and out of shadows and made you want to protect her without quite knowing why, a lost girl with a southern lilt, gloves, and white hair that immediately marked her. But somewhere deep inside of her she was a woman who wanted to be touched, wanted all of her secrets to be understood, wanted, more than anything, to at last be set free.

He could do that, she knew. She spent nights dreaming of his touch, dreaming of his hands coursing over her, dreaming of his mouth against hers, dreaming of his touch inside of her, all over her, giving her both peace and desire in a way she could not find elsewhere. They were children of the same nightmare, she believed, and he was the one that could save her. He could liberate her from her yearning for his touch. And so she searched.

Suddenly, it got almost too easy. She worked for a week as a waitress here, a week as a maid there, picking up cash, and suddenly, heard a word that made her pause: Wolverine.

She had seen his tags those many years ago, but--What sort of twisted fool kept the name the devil gave him? It marked him, surely, and named him, so that in the end a bodiless hand could extend its long, icy fingers, and drag him away from her all over again. She had followed the name anyway.

She had hitch hiked, bummed rides, used her little cash, stolen when she had to, following the rumor of that name. The truckers knew all about it, and they liked to talk: "Yeah, the Wolverine, sure. I know him. Big fella. Cocky as hell. Doesn't speak much. Real animal in the cage. Invincible, they say. Never a scratch on him."

She would have followed any lead she got, but that last—'never a scratch on him'--really made her sit up and take note, made her think she had at last hit on something. When the truckers had spoken she had listened for clues as to whether this Wolverine was indeed the man she was looking for, not clues as to whether he was *not*. She hadn't heard it when they told her he was ruthless, and animal, a real killer, if anyone'd ever give him the chance. She'd just heard 'Wolverine' and 'invincible,' and had thought she had found what she was looking for.

Now, here in this bar, she immediately knew that she was in the wrong place. She had followed the wrong man. This could not be who he was. This could not be what he was.

The need was sudden, immediate, urgent. She had to escape; she had to get out. She had to leave before she caught a glimpse of the animal in that cage.

But some morbid fascination kept her rooted--she was a single, still face in the midst of dozen of distorted ones: a calm, clean pool unrippled by waves crashing against it.

The body that finally stood straight, cracked its neck, and become visible to her was in some sense, the same way. His back was something still, something powerfully defined in the midst of these formless shapes that shifted and reformed around it, as if it was the focal point of everything in her world. It was steady, sure, the only thing really existing in the room, precisely in the way that strong, certain hands had once been her only reality as she melted shapelessly under them.

He was the king of the cage. He was a ruthless fighter that made a living by beating the life out of other men. He was without compunction in doing so; he liked doing it, even. The savior she had searched for so long was anything but the gentle, selfless touch she remembered. He still had the tags around his neck—like an animal, as if he accepted the fact that that's what he was, as if he was proud of it.

She was a little fool. She had spent years dreaming of that touch, but what did she know of the man behind it? All that she had of him was some fantasy that she had created, without real definition or limit, now that she actually considered it. She had had a childish idea that he would fix her and make everything better. The truth was, she knew nothing of him. What her mutation had pulled from him she had hidden away, unable to look at it because it contained too much pain, and because it contained that most anguished, most beautiful moment of her life--when she had wanted him and he had touched her.

And even as her dreams of this man shattered into pieces at this sight of him, of a man who made a living by causing pain, of a man who seemed to have no gentle edges, who didn't have a care in the world or give a fuck about anybody--even as she saw him, her desire rose in her. She would have known him by this, even if she had not recognized that stance, that back, that hair, those tags. She would have known him by the wetness growing between her thighs, by the way her stomach and nipples tightened into little knots, by the way her mouth fairly watered at the sight of him. In the years since she had last seen him, nothing had made her feel as completely a woman as she knew the sight of him could.

And she knew that no matter who he really was, his hands still have the power to touch her. Something in her, somehow, felt that she even deserved that.

* * *

He didn't recognize her. He hadn't recognized her in the bar, where he pretended to watch the TV and she watched him, and shrieked a word to save him the pain of a knife. And he hadn't recognized her when he wanted to leave her there in the cold, snowy street; he hadn't recognized her when apparently he'd grown a conscience, somewhere between the whiskers and the cigar. He still didn't recognize her. Perhaps it was the fact that she was older. Perhaps it was the white hair. Perhaps he had buried her too deep, beneath other memories that were more painful, more important than she was.

Why did she think he would remember? Why did she assume she was the only one? They probably brought thousands of girls in there; he certainly had the energy for it. Maybe he had made all of them want him. She didn't blame him, not at all--he had suffered so much. Why bother to remember her? Why care for her little, sniveling, endless and searing desire for the touch of him to burn into her once again?

She already knew how stupid she'd been to assume he'd be her knight in shining armor and take her into his arms, telling her how sorry he was, how long he had searched for her, how he wanted to make it up to her in any way possible. She felt twice the fool now, hitching a ride though she knew it was dangerous, riding silently beside a man of whom she could ask nothing if he didn't recognize her.

It was not as if she could tell him. She did not want to repeat what had happened in that black box, not ever, both because it was something sacred and something terrible. She had allowed herself to revel in the memory of his touch, it was true, but she did not take pleasure in the reality of what had happened that day. And to have to relive that reality was something she could never do, no matter how much she wanted from him.

And yet, this could not be the end of the road, either. She had not searched so long and so hard for it to end this way; she would ride out the tension she felt in the air and see what came of it. She wavered between pity, revulsion, and uncertainty--knowing, somehow, that she didn't quite know what she was dealing with, and yet still feeling as if she deserved something from him--and so above everything else, she was determined. "I'm Rogue," she said finally.

Apparently he could sense she wasn't about to give him an ounce of Marie, because he snapped derisively out of the corner of his mouth, "What kinda name is Rogue?"

"I don't know. What kind of a name is 'Wolverine'?" She was fishing, trying to understand he was and what he could be, trying to understand what kind of man or animal let someone mark him with something as good as metal collar around his neck, naming him and branding him and owning him.

He didn't answer. Maybe he had a right not to. She had been in the labs for maybe a couple months, and she knew--because of the tags, because of what the scientists had told her--that he had been in there years, and she didn't even know how long he had had to stay after her. Certainly, worse things than her must have happened to him. She'd seen the claws, knew what they were, knew that they had been added sometime there, knew how they had added them, and knew the voice that had laughed as they had done it to him. So much had obviously happened to him, and the twisted fact of the tags was proof that somehow it hadn't ended. "When they come out—does it hurt?"

His mouth was stiff as he said it. "Every time."

No wonder he didn't recognize her; much more had been done to him than being forced to take a woman. It might have even afforded him some pleasure through all those dark days. He might not even care. Why would he even bother to remember? Any ounce of humanity he might have had was more than likely gone—with good cause, but still gone.

And yet the fact remained that he had touched her, and his body had wanted her. She still wanted that touch; she still wanted something from him, and she realized she might be desperate enough to try to get it any way she could, no matter who or what he was.

* * *

'Does it hurt when they come out?' The little catch in her voice raked across his mind like a virus, making him forget for a moment his frustration in deciding whether to take her or just hold her—or, what seemed to be the most reasonable option, to just leave her alone, because she was beginning to confuse the hell outta him, and the Wolverine didn't like being confused. Her voice wormed little holes into secret places, awaking things—images, feelings, nothing definite—that he hadn't known were there, and his answer was suddenly unguarded.

The smell of her had begun to fill his camper--the smell that was somehow sweet and almost fresh, despite the months of road wear on her. The smell bothered him, tugging at memory, at desire, at a darkness deep inside him better left forgotten. The scent of her made the air heavier, somehow, and the heaviness felt like waiting. There was a scent of anticipation, and it made him downright anxious.

There'd been something strange about her from the very beginning. Maybe he'd sensed it in the cage and that's why his senses had flared up--becoming hyper-aware, just as they do when something was about to attack him, ultra-sensitive to little sounds and tiny movements. It wasn't just because he had wanted her; he was sure of that now.

Later, in the bar, he had been able to tell that there was something about her that bothered him, something that wasn't quite right. Maybe it was the way she had watched him, he had thought, eyes flicking up to the mention of mutants on the TV screen from moment to moment. When she'd shrieked a warning and hadn't really been surprised at the revelation of his claws, he'd thought he'd figured it out. She was a mutant too. Go figure.

But the strange feeling had been thicker than ever as he drove away from her standing on the road, leaving her after dumping her out of his trailer. The air had felt heavy even then, as if something terrible was waiting to happen. And strangest of all, he'd felt his chest tighten at the idea of leaving her there, alone, in the cold, freezing to death.

When she'd gotten into the truck that strange feeling had increased tenfold. She's asked him for something to eat and he's wished he had more to give; she'd taken off her gloves and suddenly he'd been worried by how cold and frail her hands looked. He wanted to touch her, to warm her up. He wanted--inconceivably--to make her feel good.

Instead she'd jerked away, and there was silence. He didn't ask about that, didn't bother. There was a code that you knew if you'd been on the road--you didn't ask questions and that way, you didn't get asked. That didn't mean this goddamn smell didn't bug the hell out of him. He wanted to know who she really was. He wanted to know why she seemed so familiar, and yet so remote. Like someone he had known in another lifetime. He'd wanted to ask her name--Rogue, like hell. Her alias was stupid, and it was in the way. He didn't ask, however, same as he didn't ask her about the gloves or weird hair that he was pretty sure wasn't just dyed. He'd asked where she was heading but she'd just shrugged, so he hadn't asked more. He wasn't that surprised at her silence--she sure as hell wasn't gonna ask about *him* after he'd released nine inches of adamantium in a seedy bar--he was just ticked, and confused.

Like now, she was drawing off her hood and shaking back her hair, turning to face him. He didn't know what the hell she expected; he just knew that when she started to take off that cloak every instinct deep inside of him told her to keep taking it off, first that, then the clothes--take it all off; let me see you, baby. Her body, anyway, was how he liked it--generous hips, full, small breasts, the lips of a woman in the face of a child. The face was what he couldn't get past--her body made him want to screw her--hard--and her eyes made him want to protect her--and to his mind, those two actions were pretty much diametrically opposed.

He didn't need this. He didn't care if every primal instinct in him screamed that he should make her his--there were plenty of women more willing than this little piece probably would be. He never fancied women who weren't willing. Even if he spotted a downright ringer with legs to wrap around him twice he didn't bother to try to get her interested if he couldn't smell she was already wanting him. There was something in him that recoiled at the idea of making a woman want him, of touching her and getting her hot for him, in slowly seducing her with his hands and mouth. When he wanted it he wanted it right away, and after that, he either wanted it again, or wanted her to get the hell out; and along with both options he usually wanted a shot of whiskey to chase the taste of her down.

And he certainly didn't need someone to protect. He had enough trouble covering his own ass, thank you. Besides which, he couldn't remember ever wanting to protect anyone before, and the fact that there was something different about her, something that wasn't familiar in the natural way, but in a way that called deep down into him--well fuck, it scared the shit outta him, and he wasn't about to let some little slip of a girl make him get all worked up--about himself or about her.

He didn't ask her any more questions--but code or no, if her scent didn't stop fucking with the feel of the air sometime soon, he was resolved to just boot her out altogether.


	4. Young and Ancient

Things didn't go at all as he had planned.

He'd scoped out a nice little motel for her--he even sorta knew the guy that ran the joint, and knew the guy wouldn't hurt her (if only because he had put the fear of the Wolverine into the night watch's soul; it was sufficient). He'd even offered to pay for her night(s) there, and the manager had mentioned he might be able to give her work for a while or something.

He told himself he didn't care, but the girl was obviously a runaway or something, had no place to go, and probably couldn't take care of herself for shit. Okay, so he'd done more than his piece, more than he thought he'd ever done for anyone in his life, and made all sorts of arrangements--and what did she do? Said she wasn't gonna leave him, so he better get used to it.

Well, she hadn't said it in so many words, not really. She was stubborn, but she wasn't stupid. She probably knew mouthing off like that to the Wolverine would just get her thrown out flat on her ass. Instead she'd made some case about how she was going where he was going--though he knew she hadn't a clue where he was going.

But in the end, he'd given in. Something in him rebelled at the idea of giving her up to that dingy motel and that seedy manager. In fact, give her up was just about the last thing he wanted to do, and he couldn't fathom why.

Of course, he had to make sure she understood several things, most of which dealt with the fact that he looked after himself, and if there was trouble, there shouldn't be a question in her mind whose ass to cover. Which was half a lie. He was telling her to look after herself--which was far more than he ever bothered to tell anyone else--and she _should_ look after herself, but he was saying she should because he wouldn't do it for her. Truth was, he really didn't know any more. Part of the reason he hadn't wanted to leave her at the motel was because he wanted to look after her--personally. He didn't want anyone else looking after her, caring for her, providing for her.

More importantly, he had also warned her that he didn't do something for nothing. He had thought at the time that that would get rid of her pretty damn quick, if she had any sense at all--but she'd merely blinked and said: "okay." He had a feeling, too, that she knew what she was agreeing to when she said it.

So they were on his terms, now. He'd driven on another night--he hadn't needed to sleep when they'd stopped at that first motel; his healing factor let him go for days at a time--and found a place to crash. A pretty nice dig he'd stayed at before; separate cabins, spaced out from each other in the woods, with hot, running water. He didn't exactly want her sleeping next to him in his camper. Whatever he said about payback, it wasn't going to happen like that. For one, it was damn uncomfortable having sex back there.

She was in the shower, now. He hadn't let her go first. He wanted to show her how it was going to be. He wanted to show himself how it was going to be, wanted to destroy all these ideas about making her feel comfortable, making her feel equal, making her feel good. He'd come out of the shower, just tags, and pulled on jeans, and pointed for her to take her turn. He wasn't about to take her with her hair filthy and her body coated in a thin layer of grime; he didn't care how her scent had changed at the sight of him, how her eyes had widened. Well, shit. At least it wouldn't be a problem of making her want him.

And somehow, the thought of that was doing all sorts of things to him. He wanted her, sure. He had wanted her from the moment he saw her. He'd caught sight of her from the cage and his plan for the night ahead had changed drastically.

He had suddenly turned lazy. He wanted to lay the other guy out, with one, maybe two strikes of his fist, and show the now-invisible woman out there that he was king here; he was untouchable; he was the stronger. He'd learned you had to give them a show, usually he almost made the fight look equal, not really letting anyone know he wasn't about to lose, but he couldn't stomach doing it after that short sight of her. He still had to give them something--not giving them a show had proved to be more trouble than it was worth--but this time, he didn't bother to prove he wasn't invincible. He was--that was it, and he wanted her to know it. So he let the guy have at him for a little while, and then he turned and laid one through the guy's fist and then another one up toward the guy's jaw, showing them all what he could have done from the very beginning. He didn't bother to look for the woman. He knew she had seen.

When he found her afterwards he realized he'd been mistaken. She wasn't exactly the type for a quick one up against the wall--or an entire, rough, ruthless night in a bed, and the two options were about all he went for. She looked--well, she looked good, despite the fact that something about her bothered him. For one, she looked too good for that place. But it hadn't stopped him from wanting her. It hadn't even stopped him from thinking of a quick way, without talking, to get her on her back in the rear room of the bar, but it had stopped him from actually doing it.

But definitely now, he planned on taking her. That's what he thought about as he sat, already aroused, in a chair outside the bathroom door, waiting for her to finish. The thought of that girl in the shower under hot water was already making him hard, like a damn teenager that got it up at the thought of it. He wanted her in all sorts of ways--he wanted himself astride her, inside her, riding her, down her throat, between her breasts, anywhere and everywhere and in every way he could have her. He wanted to take her--over and over and over again, so that she would know, so that anyone would know, looking at her, that she was his.

Well fuck, he had a right to take her. That's what he'd meant when he'd said she wouldn't get something for nothing, and that's what he'd meant by getting the single cabin with the one bed in a sort of secluded snowy place where he could take her all night long and not have anyone bother him. Well anyway, if she didn't figure out by that what he'd meant, then she'd damn well find out pretty quick. So what if she was young and pretty and made him want to protect her--even if she looked young, he knew she was beyond the legal age; he knew that from the wear and tear on her she couldn't be completely innocent.

And so what anyway. Fair play was fair play. He wasn't giving her any more charity--he'd given her the ride; that was it. Now she was his to take--and well shit, if she wanted to stick around, he might even let her, and he'd provide for her and she'd keep his bed warm, and that was starting to sound like a pretty damn good deal, even though never considered an arrangement like that with anyone before. But something nagged him--some small doubt, telling him that arrangement wouldn't be just a deal, and if it was, he'd be getting the hot end of the bargain just by having her close. Somewhere that something that wanted to take care of her all by himself merged with the something that made him want to possess her, completely, entirely. She was different than what he went for--the quickie type or the catty, scratching one-hullava-nighters he got rid of the next morning. Something in her called to him.

And, what puzzled him more than anything--he still wanted to make her feel good.

These were the thoughts he was thinking when she came out of the shower, wrapped in towels, smelling like temptation incarnate. He wanted to show her what he wanted--quickly, forcefully, without room for questions, because the ideas of gentleness she gave him scared the shit outta him. And so he didn't really wait for her at all--not to dress, not to get ready, not to assess him, not to understand the situation. He just bent her head back and covered her hot little mouth with his--his bruising hunger demanding that she spread her lips in response to him, accepting his way of branding her.

He ended up on his knees. Somehow, this felt more than strangely familiar, more than déjà vu--it plucked at more than his senses, at more than memories. This sensation of being on his knees before this woman was something stolen from time immemorial. He felt as if he had seen it in a scripture, somewhere, the man weakened before the woman, who rises up before him like a goddess that he has always known and is only just beginning to fear: ancient and young, immense and petite, love and squalor . . . He remembered being below her like this, seeking redemption in her, seeking forgiveness, seeking peace--most of all, seeking himself, as if she could somehow give it to him.

The idea told him something deep and dark that he didn't remember and didn't want to hear, and he was glad that she had immediately begun to speak.

"Are you alright?" Vaguely, he nodded. "I'm sorry, I should have told you. It's my mutation--" She narrowed her eyes, knowing that he knew she was a mutant, even if he didn't--couldn't--wouldn't--remember the rest. "You can't touch my skin," she finished finally.

His eyes narrowed as well as he stood. "A mutant, huh?" he snarled, his body close, his eyes beginning to snap with rage. Her attempt to hold something above him, to deceive and delude him, to manipulate him, made him furious, made him want to take her harder, faster. "Is that how you planned on staying safe from me tonight, girl?"

"No, I--"

He cut her off, his hand gripping her throat through the edge of the towel and pinning her against the wall. His other hand made a fist of her hair, and he leaned in close to her ear, breath almost caressing her. "It ain't gonna save ya, kid. No one is safe from me." His low, hard voice seemed to speak only truth--and a threat: He wanted her, and he was going to get her, one way or another. "I can find other ways to touch you."


	5. Memory and Desire

'I can find other ways to touch you.' He had no idea that he had said those words to her before, not in a sneer but in the gentlest, most generous of offers. Now he was hard, rough. He was not asking at all; he planned to take.

She had not answered that offer as she had years ago because his kindness had given her strength. No, she had been able to step forward and tell him she was unafraid because she knew that there was more than one reason he had offered. It wasn't just to give her an outlet; it wasn't just so that she could change her mind. It was an admission that he--despite the fact that he hadn't wanted to use her--had indeed wanted to take her. He had wanted to touch her, explore her, know her as a woman. It was his desire for her that had given her strength in the years after, not his gentleness.

She had had men want her before, of course. There had even been a few that had still wanted her, despite the obstacle of her skin. And yet, she had never allowed herself to be with another man because she knew that she would always be dreaming of a different man, that it would take _him_ to set her free. And so now she found that she still wanted him, even though this was not the man she set out to find, even though she knew that his desire for her was a purely animalistic reaction. The fact remained that this was _him_, and that once, more than just the animal in him had desired her, and despite the naivete of it, that man remained the best she had ever known.

She moved over to her duffel, hips swaying, and drew out the black silk--fine, expensive black silk, that she had bought and kept, just in case. He was watching, and she knew that eyes she had at first thought were yellow were darkening into the blackness that she remembered, that she had treasured, that she had told herself was the blackness of desire. Even now she found that she was aroused, that the mere thought of him wanting her made her wet. And her reaction to this shame told her that maybe he was all she deserved, a man who was not a man for a woman who could never really be a woman; perhaps this, somehow, could at last set her free of him. She was taking what she could get--though Marie had always hated settling.

The increasing arousal in her scent pleased and surprised him. He did not expect this obedience, when he yelled at her; he did not expect that she would come to him with this length of silk and a couple condoms and hand them over, head down, as if in submission.

He tossed the condoms on the night stand and wrapped the silk in his fist, and it was another kind of blackness, one that for him, too, invoked memory. He knew he had done this before. He knew that once there was only a thin film of fabric separating him from death, oblivion, and pleasure.

He shook his head. Tricks were being played in his mind, and he didn't like it. This woman was seriously fucking with his senses.

She had neatly folded her towels and laid them aside, and was laying down on the bed, waiting. She was methodical, and it disturbed him. She did not look like a woman should look, waiting for a man to come to her bed; she did not try to be tempting, to be comfortable, to be seductive, to be yearning. Nor did she look like she was afraid. She looked just this: strong, not shaking, not trembling, accepting what was to happen . . . lioness: it floated through his mind . . .

. . . Her familiarity, her wisp of fabric, her strength . . . He couldn't put them together. His hand opened and closed around the cloth, trying to understand, trying to both stem the ache for her inside of him, so that he could figure it out, and also to simply let his need for her overrun him, so he didn't have to try to remember who she was, what she might be.

Desire, of course, won. Desire was easier than thought; it always had been. He sat beside her on the bed, just jeans and tags, leaning over her naked body. He took in her eyes, the movement of her breasts--and he realized that there was nothing methodical about her at all. Her scent should have told him. She was hungry for him--ravenous--he merely breathed and she shuddered; a slight movement of his hand that didn't even touch her and her body moved in reaction, as if she was on strings that he controlled.

He'd never had a woman be so sensitive to him. He'd known she was different; he knew she wouldn't be like the other women, who always wanted it just as much as he did. Oh, she would be willing, in the end--he hadn't planned on raping her. But what he'd planned on was taking her, not because she wanted it, but because _he_ needed it, because of that insistent, irresistible need to make her his.

What he found when he sat beside her naked form was that somehow, she was his already.

He began to touch her in the ways a few of the women in his past had asked for but he had never allowed--touching, in those cases, had felt too intimate for his tastes; he recoiled from any form of romance or seduction or gentleness. Yet now it fascinated him, the ways she reacted to him. She seemed to know, seemed able to expect the surely unpredictable directions of his hands, and arched up into them as if she had long yearned for his touch.

Something, here, was incredibly wrong. The air was oppressively heavy, tight with the anticipation he had been smelling since he met her--but her scent was intoxicating by now, filling all his senses as he wonderingly watched her lithe, full body writhe under his hands with barely a touch--here, there. Watching her arousal grow, watching her body buck for him, watching her nipples harden for him was making him so hard that he ached. Half of him desperately wanted to move violently, rhythmically inside of her, while the other half of him had this unbearable fascination with touching her, just these soft, gentle touches that had never aroused him--had even disgusted him--before her. He was lost in the want for her, in the need for her, in the way her body called for him, had been calling for him since he first laid eyes on her; he wanted her so much and he knew that she knew how much he wanted her, but he didn't care--

A gasp of a breath as his fingers found a place that sent a jolt throughout her entire body. She was panting; her eyes were closed; she was twisting, reveling in the feel of him touching her once again, the smell and sight of his arousal--"I--" She gasped as his fingers delved deeper; she wanted him to take her there; she wanted him to give it to her; she wanted--"I want you, Logan."

All the warmth was gone and all the touching stopped, except for the hand about her throat that was ready to squeeze but a little and halt her breathing altogether. Her eyes flew open. "What did you say?"

All the strength was flowing out of her, and both of them knew fear was rising in her. She had forgotten, because he had begun to touch her as he once had before, that he was not the same man as before. This man, she didn't know, didn't even recognize. She was looking into a face contorted with fury and rage, eyes wild with what she was sure was a ballistic killing power. Her eyes met his, one pair dark with incensed wildness, the other pair as wide and scared as a wounded rabbit's. "I said--I--I want you."

He was too angry to speak. The little liar; the little bitch; the little whore; he ran out of things to call her in his head. He lifted her by the hand sheathed in silk at her neck and this time, he did slam her against the wall. He pinned her body with the length of the cloth, making it so that she couldn't use her skin against him. He didn't know what she had stirred up in him. He only knew that it was bad. Very bad, and painful, and somehow, she was the cause of it. "What the hell are you doin' to me?" She had done it on purpose, fucking with his mind, his past, his desire, playing him the whole time. And he had actually wanted to make her feel good. And she--oh god, he was so scared--she was beauty, pain, and promise and he--he couldn't--"Say somethin', goddamit, or I _will_ kill you."

The acrid scent of her fear was increasing exponentially, which infuriated him further, because somehow, that scent was familiar too. "Please," she said finally, looking down, because his hot gaze was too much. "I want to live."

He had heard this solemn plea from her lips before.

She saw his eyes widen and the expression of abject horror bloom in his face before he dropped her, and she crumpled to the ground, trying to rustle air through her lungs, wheezing in the sudden lack of pressure on her throat. She took that moment, struggling for air, eyes darting wildly around and relief suffusing her at his absence--at first.

She knew that he had recognized her, but she was confused, mostly by what she felt. She should be running as fast as her legs could carry her; she should be trying to get away. He had just threatened to kill her, and she surely believed him in that moment. And yet, what she really wanted to do was to find him, to make sure he was alright, to understand his violent reaction to her. She knew that her thoughts of him in the cage at the bar--and since--were wrong, all wrong, unfair, unjust.

She should have known; she should have seen. He still wore the tags. What kind of animal wanted that mark on him? What kind of man? The one thing she had been right about this whole time is that she didn't have any idea on earth what, in God's name, she was dealing with.

She began to hear him retching, just outside the cabin door. Wearily, she stood up, swaying slightly, and, before she could stop to rethink her actions, she was heading out there, into the snow, naked, dragging black silk, approaching the man who seemed as if he might have murdered her but seconds ago.

He was vomiting again and again and again, apparently unable to stop. She didn't know what the healing factor was making of that. The rest she might have realized; she might have guessed. She might have understood that if he did indeed have some of the man left in him, touching her would be revolting to him. Her ideas that he had desired her, so many years ago, that he had actually wanted her, were surely falsified. She did not know how anyone in the world could want her.

The dry heaves at last subsided. He stayed bent over for a moment, knowing she was watching, and then, abruptly, he stood, wiping his mouth. Slowly, at last, as if he could barely stand to, he looked into her eyes.

What she saw there terrified her. She had never seen so much torment in two such tiny places. She knew, suddenly, that the man that had touched her six years ago was looking back at her, that he was not gone at all but imprisoned, tortured, pained, frightened, trapped inside a world of guilt and remorse for her, at war with the animal that simply tried to shove everything down and away. She staggered back, and he wearily turned away. Now he was heading toward his truck; now he was opening the driver side door--

"Where are you going?" she called.

"Away."

"Wait." She walked swiftly, bare feet through the snow, after him. He waited, but he didn't seem to be willing to wait around for long. He just leaned there, against the side of the truck, as if he couldn't hold himself up, just waiting for her. "You can't just run."

"Watch me," he said dully, but made no attempt to go, as if he didn't even have the energy. He hadn't even gotten his pack from the room; he meant to leave with only jeans and tags on his back.

"No," she said simply, staring at him in incomprehension. She'd found him--truly found him, found the man inside what they left of him, and she was not giving him up without a fight. "I won't let you. Do you know how long I've searched for you, Logan?"

The man shuddered and looked away. "I don't think you've found him, darlin'," he said at last, and she thought that they were both surprised that his voice was so gentle. "Look somewhere else."

"I don't understand--"

"Look kid," he growled, "don't you see? I almost did it again. I almost--I almost--" He vaguely gestured toward the room, then at her naked body. He looked sick again at the sight of her.

Her eyes clouded in confusion as she shook her head. "It's not the same. It's not the same. I asked for it, this time. I wanted it--"

Even she could sense the heaviness in the air, and it no longer felt like waiting, but simply weight, a heavy, oppressive weight, that was utterly and completely lacking hope. "You wanted it last time, too," he said, his voice ancient, his eyes dead.

"But then it's not your fault! I don't understand. I want you, Logan; I want--"

"Stop saying that." His voice was so low, so silky smooth, so without expression, that fear inadvertently rose in her and she snapped her mouth shut. "Whatever it is you want, sweetheart, it ain't here. You've been chasin' dreams, darlin'." He turned back to the driver's seat, ready to get in.

She had only one weapon, and she didn't even know if it would work. "Please--I need you."

He sat behind the steering wheel, and his head slowly drooped, his eyes closing. "Don't."

She knew that a battle raged inside of him; she had seen the man, not the animal, staring back through his eyes. She knew that he felt guilt and responsibility for her through his fear of her, through his disgust. Marie hoped to play on that, much as she detested the action--because it wasn't, after all, fair. He was the one that had done it to her, unwilling as he had been, and he had to accept what was done as much as she. She believed she had the right to seek redemption in her own way. "Please. I am asking."

He sat like that for some time, head down, eyes closed, unmoving, which made her begin to worry. She was shivering in the cold, and pulled the silk around her, which didn't help at all. Suddenly, he got out and slammed the truck door behind him. He looked at her, eyes yet again, different—hard, almost lifeless, with something incredibly dangerous seething underneath. "Don't expect too much, darlin'. I ain't stayin' long."


	6. Wild License

He tried to wash the taste of her, mingled with his own vomit, out of him. He tried to wash the feel of skin and silk from his hands; he tried to wash the look of her eyes from his mind.

It wasn't working.

He still wanted her. He wanted her as he had when he had first seen her, looking out from the cage at the bar--wanted her on her back and sweating for him; he wanted her as he had not an hour before--marked and claimed: his, in every way possible--and wanted her as he had in hell years ago: desiring the soft, dark innocent eyes that he could see looking back at him from this older woman's, desiring the sweet, child-face that had matured--but was somehow the same, desiring her tumbling hair, now streaked with white, desiring bony little ribs and shoulders he remembered, that had filled out into the lush, curved figure now sitting outside the bathroom.

And the very thought of it made him ill. His desire to possess her sickened him; his desire to take her positively nauseated him. Most of all it made him want to flee, to get the hell out, before he hurt her, before he touched her, before he took her again as he almost had earlier that night. He wanted to leave her before he was sick with shame and memory all over again.

And yet, she had asked, and he had stayed. How could he do any less? Whatever she wanted from him couldn't be good--but he wanted to stay, because she had asked. He wanted to protect her. He wanted, somehow, to make up for the things he had done to her, and that made him sick too, because he knew it was impossible.

* * *

The bed was a mess, but she didn't want to go back there. She could see in it the way he had begun to touch her, the way arousal had tightened his jeans, the way she had writhed in her desire for him. He had surely wanted her, but the man in him was ashamed for her, guilty for what he had done and disgusted by what she wanted from him. What could he think of her now? Wanting from him again what he had unwillingly given the first time? Wanting what had been forced on her? Why had she thought that what she had desired of him for so many years was innocent in any way?

She shivered, huddled in the chair, wrapping the silk around her. Her feet were still numb from walking barefoot in the snow, her nipples painful from unsatisfied desire and winter wind. He was in the bathroom, washing his face, washing the smell of vomit and her desire off of him. She didn't want him to come out.

He did, of course. He took one look at her and sneered. "Put some clothes on, for Christ's sake."

She stood, and obeyed. His back was turned as she struggled into her clothes, little clinking sounds coming from his search through his duffel. When she turned he was tossing back his second shot of whiskey. He paused for a moment before the third, as if unsure, and then looked at her, and tossed that one back too. Apparently, the sight of her afforded a drink. She settled back into the chair, waiting for something that she knew was coming, although she didn't know what it was. He poured another shot and brought it over to her.

"Drink up." She took it and tossed it back, like he had. He nodded, once, and took the glass away. For a bare moment she thought she saw his thumb sweep across the mark her lips had made on the glass, but then the entire thing was enveloped in one large hand, as if he was considering breaking it. Instead, he simply tossed it back into his pack, and stood for a moment, before he began to pace.

She wanted to tell him to stop, that his ill-channeled energy and the whiskey--not to mention her unfulfilled desire and the fact that he was shirtless, feral, and practically reeking of unrestrained masculinity, pacing like that--were making her feel more than slightly sick, but the thought of him still, every muscle quivering with the ferocity now in his eyes, made her feel positively ill, and so she said nothing.

"Tell me what you remember," he said finally, and then he _was_ still, and there was pain, not rage, in his eyes. "Tell me what happened."

She felt herself trembling, and hated the weakness in herself. "After . . . after they took me away from you, they . . . it--"

"No," he said, closing his eyes, and looking as if every muscle in his body was desperately needed to hold him up. "Tell me what happened when--when they brought you to me." His eyes slid across hers and away, unable to hold hers.

She shuddered, and he knew what she saw. She saw the man who had raped her as a child and couldn't even remember, hadn't even bothered. Remembered _her_ but didn't remember how it had happened, had locked it away from himself because he wasn't even man enough to remember. Wasn't even man enough to remember her face. "At first you wouldn't, but then you began to touch me, and you took me, and--"

"No. Tell me all of it, exactly how it happened. Every last detail." His eyes met hers. "I know you remember."

She had never had never thought she could repeat that, and now she saw that there was something grotesque, something shameful, in the way she had twisted under him, pleaded for him--especially now, knowing that she had done that under a man who didn't, couldn't, want her. His body might react to her, but the man that was still there recoiled at the thought of her.

And yet she told him, because she did believe he deserved to know what he had done. She told him every word that was said, every where he touched her and every way, and he stood there with his eyes closed, head down--listening, she thought--but then again, she wasn't sure. She described how his hands moved down over her, how his lips took her and his tongue invaded her, how his fingers flicked at her breasts, between her legs--

Suddenly his hands were clenched on the arms of her chair and her world was his body, leaned menacingly over her, trapping her in the chair. "You liked it. You liked it, didn't you." It was a threat, a command, a challenge, anything but a question; his stance, his tone of voice, his words--all of these were of a man causing a woman pain for pleasure, telling her that she loved to be dominated, making her admit that there was something in her that was masochistic--all except his eyes. His eyes were of a man lost, drowning in her and unable to escape his own torment.

She realized how powerless she was against him, against this onslaught of control and passion and pain that hid layer upon layer of a man she didn't, couldn't understand. Everything in him was consumed by a conflict between man and animal, and both, in their own way, were demanding something of her. The animal in him still wanted her, wanted to devour her, wanted to make her his, wanted her to know it and wanted her to like it. The man in him was clinging on the edge of guilt and pain, hoping against hope that she could forgive him, that she had liked what little he could give her that day in their past. If the man's grasp should slip just the tiniest bit, he would be plunged into wild license, ruthless, taking from her what he wanted, because he would be already lost.

And so she met his unbearable gaze with her own, and said, quite simply, "Yes. Yes, I liked it."

What they had told him was right--he had twisted her mind, even if he hadn't meant to. Skillful hands and an unforgiving mouth could seduce the best of men, bring them to their knees, make them beg for more. It was far easier with a child just awakening, stumbling into awareness and sexuality, especially when she was alone and afraid and wanted only touch and comfort. He had twisted her, perverted her, gained control over her, and for the love of God, he had made her _like_ it.

And he, the sick fuck he was, got off on it. Got off on the fact that he had made her want him and that in so many ways, she was still his. Her words squeezed all the blood from his heart and into his groin, making his jeans painfully tight with need, lust, desire, and that unbearable ache to envelop her and hold her and never let her go.

If she had come to him hoping to find that a man had taken her, if she had hoped that she had lost her innocence to someone who was as much a victim as she, all she would find would be this animal inside of him, raging to take her. She would come looking for apologies and all he could give her would be a really good fuck--a nice lay for himself, her enjoyment in it be damned. How could she ever be anything but disgusted by the animal who had had her once and so wanted her again--and again, and again, if possible? How could she live with that final realization that the person that had taken her--the person that she had thought made her feel so good, was not a man, but a monster?

And yet for the love of fucking Christ, she _still_ wanted him; he could smell it on her. He still had sway in her body and her mind, and he had never even fathomed that he could have manipulated her so completely.

He took his hands off her chair and she heard the soft snikt of his claws release, before he turned away. She half rose, knowing, somehow, that he wanted to sink those claws into something--something with give, preferably human flesh. She also knew, somehow, that it wasn't her he wanted to hurt, which left himself. She half rose, hand extended.

He flinched away from her fingers, though she had again sheathed them in gloves. "Don't touch me."

He could have no idea how much that hurt her, but she didn't consider that as she recoiled from those three dreaded words. That command was the first thing she had screamed when she learned of her mutation, and the first thing her family and friends had said back to her when all was said and done and they learned what she was. It was what countless people said when they learned she was a mutant, even when they didn't know what her mutation was, as if it was a disease they could catch just by touching her. It was what men said when things got a little intimate and she decided to tell them about her 'gift'. It was what she said each and every time someone got too close, and the three words she knew she could never, ever, say to this man before her--though apparently, he could say them to her quite easily, and break her heart in the bargain.

He stood there, shoulders heaving, attempting, apparently, to hold back being sick once again, to hold back his disgust at the thought of her touch. Again, she knew he had the right to be disgusted. Finally he ground his teeth, and turned his eyes toward her once more. "What of the child?" he said at last.

"There was no child," she said promptly.

"You're lying."

He was right, of course, but she didn't exactly want to tell him the truth in the state he was in. He did, however, deserve to know. "I miscarried."

His gaze did not change. "Was there blood?"

"Yes," she said, wavering where she stood.

"Lots?"

"Yes."

"Screaming?"

He seemed to be some kind of sick pleasure out of this, advancing on her, crowding her, filling her space, searching for her to say the thing she never wanted to tell him. "Yes."

"What?"

"I don't know what you--" she began.

He cut her off. "You do. What were you screaming?"

How did he know? "Your name."

He turned away from her, that broad, strong back facing her, defeated, shoulders drooping. He didn't know what she was trying to do to him. Torture him, perhaps. He wanted to torture himself; that's why he'd pressed. He certainly deserved torture from her--but he was not just going to stand there and take it. He might have a sense of justice, but he knew he would never be able to survive her retribution, and his sense of self-preservation went beyond anything else.

She had said she was looking for him. Why? Did she think he owed her something? It was true. He owed her everything. But he wasn't the person to give her what she needed, whatever that was. If she needed peace, if she needed answers, if she needed resolution, he would give her only further pain. There was nothing in him of peace or resolve; inside of him there was only an animal that called to her, yearned for her, ached for her in ways and places he hadn't known existed.

"What is it you _want_ from me?" he asked finally.

You, your touch, your hands on me, turning me into fire. I want you wanting me and needing me the way I need you, the way I have always needed you, the way you made me need you. I want your touch in my hair, on my thighs, between my legs, inside of me all the way up through my soul. I want you to be a man and make me a woman. I want you, Logan.

She, of course, said none of this. She was sure she never could, with the way the man in him recoiled at her. She did tell him the truth, in the end, but not in a way he would understand it: "The first boy I ever kissed was in a coma for three weeks. I can still feel him inside my head."

Metaphorical hackles rose instantaneously at the thought that he wasn't the first male her lips had touched. He wanted her mouth to be his, unclaimed, pure property, that he could take and know was his. But the then the rest of her words hit him, and made him bury that desire forever, deep within himself.

"And it's the same with you," she said, staring up at him earnestly. "You are there--your mutation, your memories, your thoughts. I need to order you and define you in my mind, so I can go on living my own life. I need--I need to get you out of my mind," she finished lamely, and it was all the truth.

He had violated her even more than he had thought possible. The fact that he was between those temples, that behind that sweet, young face that he longed to kiss and touch and protect with all that was in him--was the dark, twisted creature that was himself--this was torture. This guilt, this remorse, this terrible weight of responsibility made him want to help her, to protect her. It also made him know he couldn't handle it and couldn't deserve it.

But there was still that in him, left over from before, that wanted to take care of her, help her in this, because she was utterly, completely, emphatically _his_, and not because he owed her. He wanted to be the one to help her. There was in fact a feral, wild, irrational pride in him that she trusted him to help her--even if he was the only one who could.

Which he wasn't. He may be independent and completely selfish, but when it came to helping this girl, he would do anything, turn to anyone.

"C'mon," he said finally. "I know a guy."


	7. The Binding

"It's been a long time, Wolverine."

"Look, Chuck, I ain't here to reminisce."

"Ah, yes. Rogue, is it?"

She stood a trifle nervously in his office, tugging at her gloves. It had been a long time since she had been in a place like this, and she felt shabby next to this fine, cultured man's fitted suit and mahogany walls. He moved the control on his chair so that he could look up at her with frank, blue eyes. Suddenly, she felt more at ease. She liked that open stare immediately. "Yes," she replied, tilting her chin.

"I'm Professor Charles Xavier," he said, inclining his head in return and smiling civilly. "Welcome to my school for the gifted."

She blinked, startled. "Gifted?"

The professor looked from her to Logan and back again, his gaze slightly surprised--and appraising. "Wolverine has not told you?"

"I ain't told her nothin'," he snapped.

Charles nodded, apparently unperturbed. "Anonymity is a mutant's first chance against the worlds hostility. To the public, we're merely a school for gifted youngsters." The professor folded his hands. "Privately, the school is a protectorate of mutant interests." Charles paused, and at last lifted an eloquent brow. She remained standing perfectly still, staring at the professor with eyes that were wide, but measuring. "Are you at all interested in the school, Rogue?"

"It sounds—it sounds like it might help." She swallowed, and voiced the nerves that were raw and picking out little chips of her in her head. "I just don't know if I'm the type of person you want for this . . . this kind of . . ." She gestured around her, at the rich surroundings, at the stack of physics books on his desk, at the wide grounds you could see from his window, where children seemed to be playing happily, innocent.

He followed her gaze. "The students here are mostly runaways like yourself, Rogue. Frightened, alone. And like you," he continued smoothly, and yet almost gently, "some with gifts so extreme that they've become a danger to themselves and those around them. You would not be out of place, here."

She bit her lip and shook her head. "I just don't know if I'm what you want for--cut out for--"

The professor blinked and sighed, shaking his head. "You think too little of yourself, Rogue. What must I say to convince you?"

"Hey. I didn't bring her here for any of your kinda convincin'," Logan snarled suddenly. He had moved out of their conversation to recline against the door frame, looking more than anything like he wanted to walk out. He had heard all this before, and he'd never liked it much. The professor spared him a glance, and turned back to Rogue, his gaze turning inward.

/"The touch of another haunts your mind, and you have been searching for years, haven't you? And now that you have found him at last, you want--"/

"Stop it! Stop, please!" Her hands flew to her temples, covering her head as if she could keep him out. She felt Logan's hand on her waist, his body thrust in front of her, between her and the wheel chair.

"Listen, bub. You ain't goin' in there. You ain't goin' in until she asks you to, and when she asks you to, you ain't lookin' at nothin' she doesn't want you to." She was startled by the protectiveness in his voice, by the intense, coiled rage in him ready to pounce at the first sign of threat to her.

"You must forgive me, Wolverine. Forgive me, Rogue," Charles said aloud, turning earnest eyes on them both. "I only meant to brush across this tense aura of suffering around you both--I did not mean to pry into your private thoughts." Charles' voice was warm, with the undercurrent of concern.

Logan still bristled, but he had subsided beside her, no longer in a protective stance.

"I don't understand. How did you know?" she asked, a hand still on her temple, as if her head was heavy and she needed this extra support to hold it up.

"I am sorry, Rogue, I should have explained. I have what is colloquially called 'telepathy.' I would never, however, seek to use that power in regard to you without your permission."

"You're a mutant too." She was slow; she had not realized. She was still unused to dealing with other mutants--or at least other people who freely admitted that they were mutants.

"You're not the only one with gifts," the professor said, offering her a slightly sardonic smile.

"You read minds. That's why you thought he could help me," she said, glancing over at Logan. He gave a single, quick nod, and returned his sharp glare to the professor, who was also nodding.

"Your thoughts and feelings roil very close to the surface, Rogue. The violence in them, perhaps, is why I was unintentionally drawn so far in. Again, forgive me, usually my power and understanding are closer under my control Your own control is noteworthy, Rogue," he said, his blue stare both honest and brutal, "but with several minds inside of you, your hold is inevitably fraying. I am surprised you have staved off being consumed for so long--this search has kept you going. You are a strong woman, Rogue, but I wish I had found you earlier. I can surely help."

"Hold your horses, Wheels. First, you ain't touchin' either of us without my permission. And second, she's my responsibility. I found her and I brought her here, and I sure as hell ain't lettin' you have a go at her before I lay down the rules."

She knew that it was his guilt over what he had done to her--been forced to do to her--that made him protect her. She knew it was his guilt that had made him stay that night at the cabin motel when she had asked him to, and his guilt that had brought her to this man, this professor, to help her. She also knew that he needed this chance to redeem his guilt, this chance to protect her to make up for things past. And so she had let him drag her across half of Canada, barely speaking, sleeping in his camper while he sped on. Both of them had needed those couple of days, silent, recovering from a mutual shock.

She was not, however, about to let him seek redemption on his own terms. She wanted something entirely different than his protection, and she felt that she deserved it--not because she blamed him, but because it had happened. They had both been used, both been tortured. She doubted that she would ever be able to ask for what she truly needed; she knew she disgusted him--but that did not stop her from wanting it. It would not stop her from trying to get what she wanted. She moved forward a little and locked eyes with the professor. Now it was time for _her_ to lay down the rules.

"I am responsible for myself," she said, not even glancing at Logan. "I seek your help, if you will give it. I have nothing to offer you in return, except myself." She spread empty hands wide. "My only condition is that you give us the privacy both he and I require." She saw the professor's eyes slip away, and she nodded. "Yes, both of us. He is bound to me."

That statement from anyone else's lips might have caused a lost limb--at the very least a growled threat--but Logan did not even deny it. He only said, very harshly, not looking at her either: "I ain't stayin' long," as he had once before.

Charles blinked, folded his hands, and with superhuman strength, suppressed a sigh. He had known two mutants were approaching the mansion and his protection since early this morning. Jean had sensed it too, smiled a little, sighed, and said: "More helpless runaways. At least we know how to handle them."

Jean was very very wrong, on both counts.


	8. Inflicting Touch

It didn't exactly suit him, being back in Westchester. They had located him two years ago--shortly after he had emerged from the woods, walking on two legs again, recalling things like human speech, money, clothes, and women, and striking a living of it by cage fighting. He'd let them take him down here, sure. The red head had a nice rack and the white haired one had good legs; they'd offered him hot food and a bed to sleep in; the bald guy had helped him remember a thing or too without digging too deep. That would come in time, Wheels said. He probably knew how long the Wolverine had been out of the wilderness, knew what it took him to speak and do little things like tie his shoes--much less be civil to people and avoid sinking his claws into that one, big eye.

It was too soon, in the end. He couldn't remember how to live among people in a house like this, with nice things you weren't supposed to throw around, and nice people who had problems with violence, and nice women who were looking for more than a single night. He'd wanted Jean from the moment he'd seen her, and it'd taken restraint he didn't know he had to keep his hands off. Part of him knew he was the biggest, the strongest, the best, could defeat Scooter on whatever terms he set out, despite that eye, but part of him wouldn't even know what to do with a woman like Jean once he got her. She had class, real class; she'd want love and tenderness and forever, none of which he had to give.

It had also been too soon to start rooting through the things in his past, despite whatever Chuck said about dealing with things now and moving on. Fuck that. There were things in there he never, ever wanted to have to deal with, and most of those things dealt with a young girl who had once held strength and hope and his name in her eyes, though he hadn't realized that then. He'd left the school and left Westchester, telling Chuck not to search for him, that maybe he'd come back, in another ten years or so. In the end, he hadn't been man enough to face himself, to look beyond himself and work for the good of mankind--or mutant-kind, whatever you wanted to call it. He'd look after himself, thank you. Let Cyclops and Chuck save the world.

Let them save the kid, too, part of him argued. He sure as hell couldn't do it. And yet he didn't want to give her up to them, even for a second. A part of him hadn't even wanted to let her have her own bedroom, to let the girl who was still very much a child sleep in peace, for Christ's sake. He hadn't argued what she'd said because she'd been right: he was bound to her, inextricably, irrevocably. To her, it may only be the fact that he had violated her and he needed, wanted to pay her back--but for him, it was more; for him, there were so many ties to her it drove him crazy.

Her body still called to his. The close quarters in his truck for the couple days straight speeding to get into Westchester had been unbearable, smelling her, hearing her make little, needy sounds as she slept, feeling in her every movement her exquisite care not to touch him. He still wanted to protect her, wanted her to be his to protect. And deep down, somewhere so deep and black and hideous that he couldn't bear to look, he wanted her to forgive him, to give him back himself as she had when she had looked into his eyes on that gruesome day and said his name, telling him she wanted him. He knew she couldn't, knew that what could be forgivable or redeemable for what he had done that day had died, that now he was only an animal that went through the motions of living like a man,--but that deep, dark, sacred place wanted it. Wanted her.

She'd stepped forward and said she was responsible for herself. Good, better that way. Chuck'd assigned them separate rooms, giving him no opportunity to prowl over her, watch her sleep, ache with the need to protect her and lie down beside her. Good, better that way. He'd tried to allow himself to sleep. He desperately wished that the separate room they'd given him wasn't flush up against hers, where he could still hear her sleep, still hear the little needy sounds she made--sounds that were like longing, like desire, like a woman pleading for his touch.

* * *

She knew those sounds. The little grunts, the little groans, the little mutterings of pain--they were sounds very familiar to her, sounds that she had made almost every night in her sleep before she had found him, before he'd brought desire so closely to the surface of her skin, making her dream of him touching her instead of them torturing her.

She sat up in her bed, leaning her head against the wall that she knew was the only thing separating him from her. She pooled the sheets around her, contemplating the room, the walls, the ceiling, her hands, trying not to listen to the sounds he made in his sleep that were tearing her heart into pieces. They had given her a room to herself. The red-haired one--Jean, pity in her eyes--had apologized for it being so bare, saying that she was sure Rogue could learn to call it home, in her own time, as the rest of them at the school had.

Marie had looked around at the rich furnishings, the lush carpet, the exquisitely soft bedspread, and said it would do. She didn't know if it would; it felt so rich, so unfamiliar. They had given her new clothes--some Jean's, some Ororo's, some of another kid about her size called Jubilee, which seemed such an unbearably happy name that Marie had had to shut her eyes for a moment. She wore this thing of 'Ro's, now--a long, white gown that didn't quite fit across her broader shoulders and didn't seem to be made for sleeping, but was flowing and comfortable and covered up every inch of her skin. It had been so long since she had worn anything this clean, this comfortable.

She had slipped between the soft, clean sheets, fallen directly asleep for an hour or so, and been awakened by these little murmurs. She felt selfish, listening, small. She had so often let herself think that she was the only one who suffered.

He'd run from this place before. She didn't trust many things or many people, but this professor guy seemed to genuinely want to help people. She almost felt safe here, almost as if she had a chance to live a semi-normal life--and that idea of a normal life had been what caused Logan to run from here before. She knew--from what the professor had said, from what the white haired one had said about learning humanity, from what the red-haired one had said about warnings and distance--spiced with the hint of desire--from what the glasses guy had said about a strict lack of bloodshed in this house--she knew that he hadn't been able to live here because things here were too regulated, too normal, too ordered for the wild things within him to be able to reconcile, to find peace in settling down.

He hadn't been free from the labs as long as she had; she knew that much. She'd been out six, him four, and he'd already had at least two years when they'd first thrown her in there. She didn't know what he'd done in the first years of his escape, but apparently, two years ago, these people had found him and brought him to this safe haven that had somehow eluded her for six years. She suspected they'd found him and not her because he didn't exactly keep the lowest profile, while she did. She'd been in the wrong stretch of Canada, but once she'd heard his name, she'd been able to track him very easily. She still couldn't fathom why he kept that name, why those tags never left his neck. Did he _want_ to still belong to that awful past? That animal they had made him?

But however it had happened, he'd known about this place, and hadn't stayed. She pitied him that, that they had twisted him so much that the chance at a normal life frightened him, drove him away--was, in the end, impossible for him.

She sighed and pushed back the covers. She stood up and made her way out of her own room, and stood for a moment with her forehead pressed into Logan's door before opening it. Once inside, it struck her when she saw him that she had never seen him sleeping, and had yet to see his face at peace. No man should look like that when asleep--tortured, as if in waking, as if worse than waking, sunk into the deepest, darkest, nightmare.

The sudden, oppressive need to touch him struck her. Until this night, she had wanted it to be him to touch her; it had been her own needs she considered; it had been herself she pitied. Now, looking at him, she felt again as if as if everything she had thought up until now wasn't right, somehow, as if she still hadn't a clue what, exactly she was dealing with--both in dealing with him and with what had happened between them--as if somehow, there was something between them that wasn't just herself and wasn't just him, either.

"Logan," she said gently, and came to stand beside him at the edge of his bed. He slept on, little grunts peeling off between his lips. Still, she did not touch him. She could not--the few times she had been touched since the discovery of her mutation had always been instigated by someone else, whether with her consent or not. She was never comfortable enough to inflict her touch on anyone. She knew she never would be. "Logan," she said more loudly, her hands spread out, as if to touch him, but not making contact. "Logan."

There was a roar, a movement, and then pain, a terrible, three pronged pain that made her eyes grow wider.

He slipped his claws back in and stared with horror back into those eyes, the wide, innocent eyes that he remembered darkening with desire, telling him she wanted him in two different, impossible instances. He saw in her his life slipping away, his last chance at any kind of salvation pooling out in the blood that was beginning to soak the gown she wore.

He panicked; he cried out, and no one came. He could only look with horror into her eyes, into the woman he had hurt so much and kept on hurting, and feel fate settle down around his shoulders. It seemed fitting, somehow, that after taking so much from her, after causing her to bleed because he could not hold the animal away from the child even to protect her, that he should make her bleed again, in a different way, because in again, in a different way, he hadn't been able to control an animal's reaction.

And frantically, irony struck him, because he realized that he could fix her and save her in a way he once ruined her--through touch. His hand found her face as he struggled to hold her upright against him with his other arm, his face leaned down into hers so that his lips, softly, chastely, touched her forehead. He hated himself that she was soft, that she felt so good, that he loved to touch her bare flesh again, and then he began to feel the pull, and he hoped that she would take him, all of him, inside of her, because she was the one beautiful thing he had found in his life and yet again managed to destroy.

A diametrically opposed irony coursed through her mind, even as she absorbed his thoughts: that in two different places, two different times, two different ways, his touch would save her and give her the strength to live.

She broke from his contact just as others were crowding into the room, and he slumped to the floor. The one called Jean was demanding pillows; the one called Ororo regarded her with pain and confusion in her eyes.

"It was an accident," Marie explained simply, and fled.


	9. Time and Space

Morning and Jean found Marie sitting dully outside, adjusting her gloves and glaring at the sun. "We were afraid you'd left," the red-haired woman said gently, sitting beside her on the stone bench over-looking the main lawn.

"How is he?" she replied, not looking up.

"He'll be fine," Jean replied clasping her hands and crossing her legs. "That healing factor is incredible."

"It's not always a good thing," Marie muttered under her breath.

"Yes, but it gives him incredible resilience, and strength. And stamina," she added in after-thought, and looked reflectively over the lawns, away from Marie.

"You want him," Marie snarled suddenly.

Jean's lips parted and she pressed suddenly sweaty palms into her skirt. "I do not."

"You're lying."

A trace of a smile ghosted Jean's lips. "I see you've taken on some of the Wolverine's more--charming--personality traits."

"No I haven't. I can sme--oh. Yes. Sorry," she offered, not really sorry, but knowing she would be if her thoughts were her own.

Jean smiled an easy, rather smug smile, and replied, "It's okay."

Marie wanted to tell her that it wasn't okay, that she wasn't off the hook, that she knew she still wanted him and it really, really pissed her off for some reason--but she said nothing. It was difficult enough to repress all of the Wolverine and memories that were belting at her brain without trying to figure out just how he could influence her emotions and reactions. Jean looked at her speculatively and at last said, "I want him, but not in any way that I can have him. You needn't worry. He and I . . ."

"Would never work."

Jean tilted her head. "Yes, that's a diplomatic way of putting it."

Marie smiled a little bit. "Not really. That's what _he_ says, and we both know he doesn't really appreciate diplomacy."

"He said that?" Jean asked, surprised.

Marie looked down. "In my head, that's what he says."

Finally, Jean nodded. "Rogue--I understand that you care for him. He is . . . There is something about him . . ." She looked away from Marie's open, frank stare and took a cool, calming breath, and said, "There is anger in him, surely, anger, and an untamed rage that requires a great deal of control." Jean sighed and crossed her legs, unable to bear looking at Marie, knowing she could read what lay under her words.

Jean plunged on, determined to make her point. "There is pain, too, and darkness—and these he hides, deep within--because, Rogue, he also has an incredible sense of honor. I know that sounds strange, but I can sense that something heavy, something with weight, rests between the two of you, and I know that he feels it his responsibility to take care of you . . ."

Marie heard Jean's assessment of Logan without really listening. Jean may be able to read minds, but she had only just scratched the surface of Logan's. Marie knew that part of her own insight was due to having part of Logan's mind inside of her once again--though still highly repressed--and that part of it was due to their shared past. But there was a part of it Jean could never share, even had things gone differently for them in their lives. Logan was the man who felt he couldn't feel, and Marie was the girl who could never be touched. They were the same in so many ways.

". . . He's been through so much. And now, with you in the bargain . . . I know he feels protective of you. I know he wouldn't have done what he did last night if he didn't care for you deeply. I just think you need to be careful of taking advantage, Rogue. He needs space, time. Added complications . . . aren't what he needs right now."

Marie only turned completely open, completely lucid eyes onto her, and said simply, "I think I am everything he needs right now." Then she stood, and left Jean staring, a thoughtful look on her face.

Marie felt the Logan in her seething at the red-head's interference, proclaiming his right to their privacy and hating her misunderstanding of what was between them. But Marie knew that Jean was trying to be helpful; her concern was for both of them. In some ways, Jean was absolutely correct. Jean knew Logan--to some extent; she knew what he would do. Knew what he was doing, right now, even as they spoke. It was why, Marie reasoned, Jean had come and talked to her. Jean knew what Marie would do, too--Logan was going to leave, and Marie would try to stop him. But really, that was only the half of it.

Jean knew what it was to need time and space as Logan did, and Marie knew it too. It was all she had needed in those six years of searching--if she got her time and space, she could order her mind and the other minds in her, she could go on living, she could bear the unbearable.

But in those moments before he had awakened the night before, something monumental had touched her. Her life had been a trap, as good as she had tried to be to people she had only allowed herself to care for just herself, only allowed herself to follow this one echo of touch. She had thought that his touch could set her free from this prison of not caring and not living at long last. What she realized, seeing him sleep last night, was that his touch wasn't what would make her whole as she had thought, as she had desired, as she had tried to work toward, even in Professor Xavier's office. It was only this: compassion.

Time and space would never heal what had happened between them. Only they could do that for each other. She knew with utter assurance that she had spoken a half-truth to the man Charles Xavier: Logan was bound to her--but she was also bound to him.

She still wanted Logan to touch her, to make her feel good, to make her burn as he had twice before. But she knew that that was not all. She knew now that she had something to give him, some measure of peace in return for her own, and that made her into more of a woman and a human being than she had ever felt she was. She could reach out to someone, at long last, after all these years of never being able to touch anyone. It had been so long since she had anything to offer.

And she wanted this, she realized. She wanted to fix him, to put him back together, to be there for him as she had once dreamed he could be there for her. She didn't know how she could, or what she had to give that he could possibly want. She knew that for him she brought only pain and guilt and disgust--but in some impossible way, he needed her. She had discovered that, last night. She had felt it in his head when she absorbed him, sensed it in his lips pressing onto her brow, understood it as she heard the sounds in his sleep that mirrored her own six years of restless sleeping. At last she cared for something in the world; at last the thought of another person didn't send her make her run, close herself, wrap herself away—the thought of Logan made her stay, reach out to someone else, and want to give with everything she had.

She found Logan in the hall, bag slung over his shoulder, hand on the knob. She was almost sick at the sight of him--she knew about his healing factor, and Jean had told her he was fine, but it was so relieving, so completely exonerating, to see him standing on two feet and healthy after touching him for so long and absorbing so much of him. "You trying to run again?" she said, almost casually, stepping into his line of sight.

Hazel eyes met hers and slid away. "I'll come back to see how you're doin'. Sometimes."

She swallowed. "I don't want you to go."

He sighed and let the bag slip. He didn't know what the hell she wanted from him, but this 'I need you' 'I want you' 'I'm asking' bit wasn't going to work again. As much as he wanted to protect her, he couldn't even protect her from himself for one measly night. He didn't know why he hadn't just chucked her off at Xavier's immediately and gotten the hell away--this whole thing was crazy. She sure as hell didn't need _him_. "Look kid--"

"Stay."

He shook his head. "I don't know what you want from me, kid, but I know this: I'm no good for you. I can't help you, darlin'." He watched her hand lift, as if to draw him back, and he stepped back, realizing he had been willing that hand to rise, wondering what the touch of her gloves would feel like rasping against his skin, wanting her to draw him back just because she wanted him, and not for any other reason.

She could not touch him, and yet she felt stronger, somehow, more whole. She felt as if she understood better what lay between her and this man from her past, and she at last understood that she could never again be just a child selfishly seeking touch. He was not something she could use to fix her and get it all over with quickly; it had never been about a fulfillment of his responsibility to her for what he had done. He had no responsibility to her; he owed her nothing--except what she also owed him, what they owed each other, if they were ever to redeem themselves of what had passed between them. It was for this reason--for him, not her--because she could give to him and they could give to each other--that she could bear to ask him to stay, to tell him to stay.

"I don't want or need your help any more," she said at last, swallowing. "I can take care of myself. You saw--last night. And you're right, this professor guy actually seems like he might be able to help. I don't want anything from you this time, Logan," she said steadily. "I'm not asking for anything beyond this: stay."

His eyes drooped closed again, and at last, he did something that half pleased her and half frightened her. He grabbed her hand, and closed her fist over something warm, hard, and completely and utterly important to him.

She knew now that in these tags were his past and those terrible things that had been done to him. She knew, too, that they were his reminder, his constant reminder, of what he had done to her and what they had made him into, and that they were the burden of his guilt. And the part in him that dealt with self-preservation knew that he needed her--and yet, he had still tried to leave--to save her, to protect her from himself. And yet because of this need he entrusted this deepest darkest part of him to her. He knew he was bound to her just as she did.

His voice rumbled above her and she closed her eyes for a moment. "I'll be back for these." She could read in him all the things he would never even let himself think: I'll be back for these, soon, sooner than I planned, sooner than I want, sooner than I possibly can, just because you ask it of me. I can't obey you and I can't disobey; I can't stay and I can't stay away; I know how I'm bound to you and I can't forget it because of all the terrible things between us. I'll be back. You know I will be back for you. For you. Always for you.

She gave him a small, reluctant half smile, and put the tags around her neck.

Maybe it was both actions that got him. Seeing her wear his tags--seeing her belong to that part of himself that he hated--made him want to stay, to cherish her, to cleanse her of their filth and his. But it also made him want to run, want to stay as far away from her as possible. Metal couldn't contaminate her as he could.

No, in the end, it was only the smile that got him. He didn't remember ever seeing her smile.


	10. Stay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ideas in the next several chapters were heavily influenced by Heather (lachlanrose), particularly her fic "Bittersweet" (to my knowledge no longer available online). She is aware of the resemblance.

He was gone only five days--sooner than she had expected, sooner than she had thought he could. He said nothing when he returned, and nothing was said. She simply knew he was in his room that sixth morning, and relatively shortly after she heard the shower running; she saw him come out, dressed and smelling much better than the smells of bacon and eggs that had tempted her deliciously five mornings in a row.

They breakfasted together, he nursing coffee and a terrible hangover that only she could detect, she wolfing down more grits, gravy, biscuits, and sausages than he thought a mammoth could hold in a sitting. He was relaxed, stretching out his bulky body with ease, but inwardly, his mind ticked warnings. He realized he'd only known the kid what--two weeks? It didn't matter that the little voice in his head told him he'd known her longer, known her all his life, in some ways, with the way she called to him. He'd never even tried to talk to the kid--she didn't, however, seem to find it necessary to talk, for which he was grateful. He'd never much enjoyed talking. Fighting and fucking, that pretty much summed it up.

Both of which were going to be a real problem, hanging around here. Scooter'd been serious about the bloodshed in the house bit, and he'd even extended it to include the lawn and the grounds. Logan was toying with Chuck's offer to join the team if only because it gave him a chance to kick some ass and take care of that first insatiable need of his. But the second . . . his eyes slid over her, then away.

She still looked completely and utterly fuckable. How she managed to do that, while still looking sweet and fresh and innocent--like a goddam kid--was beyond him. And the way she made covered skin look sexy, the way he wanted to tell her to leave it on instead of take it off, the way she'd sniffed him and said hey that morning, the way she ate her freakin' biscuit--all those little things about her turned him on, and he didn't know where the hell the goddam off switch was.

The thought of another woman made his skin positively crawl. He'd tried--Lord knows he'd succeeded--with other women in his short five day skip-out, but he'd felt sick afterwards. Every woman he'd had he pictured with her face, her legs, her lips, her breasts, and it plagued him with guilt when he'd be above another woman begging for him, scratching for him, spreading for him and trying to take him deeper, when none of them could take him as deep as she had with that single word: "Stay."

It wasn't just because they were cheap hookers or loose women, either. Even the thought of Jean was dim and hazy next to the thought of her, and she had once made his blood so hot that it'd been difficult to control.

Still, that word--stay--her smile, and his tags--still around her neck because he hadn't asked for them back and she hadn't offered--planted him firmly here, despite the mansion's deficiencies. God, she almost made him feel he could stay, could live among civilized people and act like a man most the time. How she could do that, after what he'd done to her, was still beyond him, but he would try. He would try, for her.

Later that day he went to tell Chuck he'd join the team--making sure he let the good professor know his exact reasons for joining--and he and some of the other senior members of the team got it all arranged. He didn't see Marie for the rest of the day. Maybe this was how it would be. She had classes--some of them high school classes, because she had never graduated, but some of them college-level, because she said she could handle it and she didn't exactly like hanging out with a bunch of fifteen-year-olds, especially because it made her think about her fifteenth year and that didn't do good things for her self-esteem. Maybe he'd go almost whole days without seeing her, just knowing she was okay, just breathing the air she breathed and assuring himself there was no possible way he could hurt her just by being in her presence.

She proved him wrong, of course.

* * *

It was the same need that drew her that night as had drawn her five nights ago--the fact that his sounds mirrored her own, the fact that she now knew even more clearly that despite the fact that he was impenetrable, unfathomable, and completely and utterly confusing to her, he was also, in some way, hers, and she might have something to offer. And so she slipped out of her bed, out of the sheets, and went to him again.

His dreams, this time, were not of what they had done to him but of what he had done to her. This time she did not pause at the door. She did not hesitate before the bed. She was not surprised at his pained and fitful sleeping. She went to him and simply said, "Logan." Then again, "Logan--Logan, wake up."

His waking was panicked, but it did not end with his claws in her chest. He sat up, his hands immediately reaching for her. He grasped her tightly at her shoulders, and then her elbows. Frantic eyes met hers, and she gazed openly back. His fingers ran, once, up her chest, as if having to know for himself that there weren't any holes there, and at last, his hands cupped her face over her hair, his thumb stroking frantic little circles on one side of her jaw. "Darlin'," he said finally, voice thick with relief.

She sank down to sit on the bed beside him, trying not to notice that he was shirtless, trying not to let her eyes flutter closed so he wouldn't be able to see how much she treasured his touch. His fingers ran through her hair and then down to her shoulder, the rubbing becoming soothing, as if to knead away his frantic grip that had been bruising, seconds ago.

Then his hands forcibly fell away and he sat, looking at her, suddenly very still. "Why did you come in here?"

"I heard you," she said simply.

"You heard me last time. You came to me and I--goddammit, Rogue. I skewered you, for Christ's sake." He snarled the words, making himself speak it like this in order to punish himself for it.

It didn't matter that going to him in this same way, when she knew he was prone to awaking violently, had been headlong and foolish. She'd known that his guilt over being careless with her--even though it had been neither of their fault, really--would plague him such that he wouldn't make the same mistake twice.  
It was a strange revelation. "I trust you," she said finally. "I even trust that which is in you that you can't control."

He flung the bedding off of him and stood up, anger palpable in his movement, in the way he walked away from her, in his stance as he stood with his back toward her. He didn't seem to notice or care that he was completely nude, that her pulse increased exponentially seeing him like that, completely bare and defiant to her gaze. "How do you do that?" he said, not turning, his voice low and dangerous.

She swallowed, and ripped her gaze back up to his head. "Do what?"

The powerful line of his shoulders shuddered, and drooped. She half stood, wanting to go to him, but not knowing what she would do, not knowing what he was talking about. "How do you look at all those ugly things I know you see and just go right on?"

"Logan--I don't--"

He turned around, decisively cutting her off. "You do. You do it all the time. With everything." Her simple three words, 'I trust you,' had made him remember another phrase that had changed his life years ago: 'I want to live,' she had said. 'I want to live'--despite the fact that she'd be living in a prison, that they'd take her baby from her, that they'd do anything and everything to torture her. He knew she'd been there long enough to know the place, know what it could do, know that there was cruelty in the world that simply couldn't even be believed--and she'd still wanted to live.

She'd seen everything about him that was awful and ugly--the animal, the man who was too weak to even claim a foothold in him, the claws, the violence, the hate, the rage, the pain, the willingness and want to _cause_ pain--and yet she trusted him. He had no idea why, but he suspected it wasn't just foolishness, and that's what he didn't understand.

"How do you do it?" he asked finally, defeated, looking at her, her form illuminated by a white gown in the moonlight. The sight of her like that ripped it from him: "How do you make me want you more every time I look at you?"

She let out a small cry and suddenly she was in his arms, and neither of them were quite sure how she got there, but he knew he couldn't stop now from touching her. It was not a sexual touch, even if it was completely sensual. His hands pulled against her up and all over, as if assuring himself that she was really there, that he was at last touching her, that he was at last holding her as he had wanted to from the beginning, the very beginning--from the beginning when she had first told him in that terrible prison that she wanted to live, from the beginning before that, from time immemorial. He simply touched her, pressing her into him, pressing her so that she could feel his erection, feel how much he wanted and needed her, but also how much neither of them were exactly ready to do anything about it.

"Stay," he said at last, into her ear, in much the way she had said the same to him days before. "Stay. Just stay, only that."

He wanted her. He actually wanted her like _that_, and he also needed her in all the ways she had discovered the night before, and in ways neither of them yet knew.

And so she stayed, not at all averse to sleeping beside a naked Logan, for once not worried about her skin or anything else. She knew it was not enough. She felt the tags heavy on her neck and knew he needed healing from their weight, so much more than this simplicity they had found, and she needed it too. But for now, just staying made her feel like all the woman she thought she could be, and spending that night with her in his arms was enough to almost make him feel like a man for the span of a full eight hours.


	11. Mutual Control

They settled into an awkward, uneasy friendship that was defined by ease itself. They rarely talked; they didn't 'do' anything together besides occasionally walk with each other or eat breakfast, and some rare nights, spend a couple of hours together in which no one but them knew what happened. He was quietly thankful for her silence, for the way in which she felt no need to fill pauses in their conversation, to put words into his mouth when he answered her with monosyllables. Most of all he welcomed the fact that she never felt the need to put a name to what they had together, to talk about the past or explain it, to ask for some kind of future arrangement he didn't think he could hold himself to. All the unease was credited to everyone else, who struggled to define that which could not be defined, that which, for them, did not need to be defined.

He touched her constantly through the barrier of her clothing. Not because she needed it, as some of the senior staff had observed--mainly Jean, who had counseled them all that Rogue was sensitive and that they should be careful to touch her when they could and show that they were not afraid. No, he touched her because he needed it, because he couldn't keep his hands off of her. She came to understand that his disgust only had to do with himself, with this ache for her that he was so guilt-ridden to have, and she tried to make him understand in turn that she welcomed his want, that she needed it both because of what had been done to them and because something primal in him called to her too.

It was hard for them both, at first. She had difficulty not flinching, sometimes, especially when he touched her in a sensitive place--which he hardly ever did. It was not that she feared him, and most of the time it was not even that he had simply startled her. It was that she had craved touch for so long, especially in these places--her waist, the spots between and beneath her breasts, the lowest spot on her back, the soft place behind her ear--that her own reactions to his innocent touches frightened her. He never touched her in a sexual way, or in any very sexual place; he simply filled his senses with her and hoped it would be enough.

Sometimes it wasn't enough, and this was what was difficult for him. The fact that she desired him in return hardly helped. He knew that it was still because he had manipulated her--was still manipulating her, in fact--that she desired him, that her call for him echoed his call for her. She might have seen him for the animal he was, but she still didn't believe in it, didn't know him for what he truly was. If he could show her--show her what _they_ had shown him, that he had been an animal all along--she wouldn't want him. A part of him desperately wanted to show her. The rest of him wanted to keep it repressed forever, hiding from her, desperately using her to make himself believe that he was a man.

For these reasons, he did not fit in at all well at the school. Part of the reason was probably because he still used Jeannie's desire for him to play it up a bit, to try to make himself react to another woman besides Marie, to try not to imagine when he playfully threaded her red hair through his hands that it was brown hair, streaked with white. Neither of them were fooling each other. They knew it wasn't going anywhere, and they used each other for something they didn't want to inflict on other people in their lives--danger, playfulness, insecurity, and animal desire.

Marie, on the other hand, adjusted much better. She spent a great deal of time alone, which she knew worried Jean and 'Ro and basically the lot of them, but apparently Jean wasn't a hypocrite and gave her exactly what she needed--space and time. She got along well enough, and made passable grades, and no one saw any reason to complain. She even had a few friends.

The professor was trying to help her both to control her mutation and to control the people she had absorbed in the short life of that mutation. There were, in fact, several other minds in her head. Logan's was the most powerful, because he had touched her for quite a long time that day when he took her--longer than normal human lives lasted; he had survived only because of his healing factor.

But in the lab they had made her touch several people whose powers they wanted to exist in one single weapon. The problem had been that she had had to lock away these people--both their minds and their mutations--very tightly in her mind, to save herself from going mad. She had been on the brink of it, more than once, in those days. She was useless mad, they discovered, even with powerful telepaths controlling her--there was nothing to hold on to and control in a brain assaulted by multiple personalities. It was why they had wanted her to reproduce, she had guessed. They very much wanted a weapon with Logan's healing power and her skin, but were afraid that if she simply absorbed Logan she would not be able to control his mind within her and would become useless. They hadn't calculated that the trauma they had already put her through would make her lose the child.

She did not often think of the child, or what might have been. It was another thing she had repressed with the minds of the others. She had loved the thing growing inside of her in a way only a mother could--hating the fact that it was there, hating how it got there, and yet feeling incredibly sorry for it, feeling that it was a part of her that might be the best part. Sometimes she missed the idea of it, when she allowed herself to think of it at all--but these thoughts were combined with such pain of loss, in having it ripped from her, that she allowed herself the small solace of being glad that it had never gotten the chance to get beyond her own body. Glad that it hadn't had to grow up in that place, glad that it hadn't become their ultimate weapon, glad that it had the chance to be in a better place.

She had no immediate difficulties with the minds inside of her or their memories. What troubled her now was Logan's recent touch, which she had absorbed when he had touched her to save her, and in it there was so much pain and conflict and confusion that she couldn't even begin to understand, didn't even know if she wanted to. She had repressed it immediately, but it called to the older Logan in her mind, and made things begin to awaken that frightened her.

But Charles helped her in leaps and bounds, and in every project he set for her, she made progress that astounded even him. He marveled at her control, which,--he said, with a sardonic smile, letting bittersweetness touch only his eyes--he should have expected, seeing as how she had been balancing six minds for as many years. Marie rather suspected that it was Logan touching her, more than anything else, that gave her the resolve and courage to make the improvements she did, but she let the good professor speculate. If she had ever tried to explain what her and Logan had together, she would have stopped soon enough, discovering it to be hopeless.

They had been at Xavier's School for the Gifted for a couple months when Marie at last told Charles that she was ready to try to go much further than she had ever gone before, and that she wanted Logan, not him, to help her do it.

"Are you sure you're ready?" Charles asked, lifting a brow.

"Perfectly sure."

"And are you sure you won't need my help? You certainly have my services, should you need--"

She shook her head. "No. He knows what's in there, better than you or me. He can help. I'm sure he wouldn't exactly be taken with the idea of you looking at it, either," she added, in after thought.

The professor hid a smile. "Indeed," he replied, solemn.

She glared--one of Logan's glares--and informed Charles when, exactly, she planned on doing it, where, and how, so that in the off chance that they did need help, he would know and could be there.

She had told Logan, of course--earlier, almost as soon as she had gotten the idea for it and gotten up the courage to ask. She had told him months ago, when she asked him to stay, that she was not going to ask anything of him, and so she had been a little nervous, a little ashamed. He'd merely shrugged his shoulders.

"Sure, darlin'. I'll do that with ya."

"Are you sure? Do you know what--?"

"Hey, it's my mind in there, ain't it?" he had snapped. It was his shortness with her, partly, that gave her to understand that he was by no means taking it lightly.

"Yes, but I can get . . . weird. I can get weird when I go through the other people in my head." By now she'd taken care of all the other people, except him. Exploring this darkness was what they were discussing.

"Weird--how?" he'd growled, eyes narrowing.

"Weird . . . violent weird, sometimes, sometimes . . . other things. Sometimes I act out memories, say things I don't mean, say things I don't know. Once I spoke Japanese," she added, trying to be light, smiling weakly.

He had grunted and his eyes had darkened. "What else?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. Sometimes I try to--to hurt people. Sometimes I want to--to hurt myself."

"Jesus." He'd begun pacing, then, which always made her slightly queasy, and at last he'd settled for smoking a cigar and puffing madly on it until the end shown red and she felt like she was going to throw up at the sweet smell of it. Finally, he'd said, "How do you know what it's like, darlin'? You done it before?"

She winced. "Yes. Sometimes . . . it just happens. Sometimes I let it."

"Jesus," he'd repeated, and snuffed the cigar in the tray, and taken her quickly, strongly, into his arms. It wasn't the gentle, casual way with which he usually touched her, but a hard embrace that ground her into him, as if he wanted to mold her against him so she couldn't ever detach herself. "Jesus," he croaked into her hair.

"It's okay," she had said, pulling away so that she could look at his face. "It's okay."

"Yeah. Sure darlin'. I'll be there with you, when you do it."

He been gone for two weeks after that.


	12. Kiyasumeni

Now, on a rather balmy night in May, when she came to him and said she was ready, all he did was nod, once, close the door, and break out the whiskey. He'd already downed two shots when he looked at her, standing open mouthed near his doorway, and explained simply, "You're gonna need it too, darlin', by the time we're through, so drink up."

She thought she saw his hand shake as he handed her the glass, and she realized he was probably right. He'd handed her a shot in the same way once before, and, now that she thought about it, she'd probably only survived that night because of the warmth the drink had given her. She tossed back the shot and handed the glass back to him, and he was obviously remembering the same night as she was, because this time she was sure his thumb lingered on the mark her mouth had made--but he quickly set the glass top down on his side table, and left the whiskey bottle open. He threw himself onto the bed and lounged himself out in that way he had of his that was like a lazy predator, then he patted the spot beside him, and said, "C'mere kid, I ain't got all night."

He did, of course, have all night, and he certainly knew it might take most of the night--she had warned him that if she got caught up in it that it might go straight into morning, and that if it went on too long she had gotten lost somewhere and he should call Charles. It was simply his way of treating this normally, of trying to set her at ease, of trying to make it less of an ordeal.

But the whiskey and the tension in him hadn't exactly helped his cause, and she wavered where she stood. She decided that with the way he was acting, the way this made him so uncomfortable--even, she knew, deep down, made him afraid--that now wasn't the time to tell him the other thing she had to tell him, the other thing she desperately wanted to tell him and was desperately afraid to, the reason she had chosen this night and this time, the reason this night was special beyond almost any other.

"C'mon, darlin'. Now ain't the time to be shy. Get over here. By me. Now."

She knew he must be incredibly worked up, to be so anxious. He was usually patient; he usually let her take her time about things, mostly because she so scrupulously gave him his own time, his own space, and her silence, when she knew he needed it. She bent her head and obediently sat beside him on the bed, and his arm immediately wrapped around her, possessive and powerful. She sighed into his shoulder and leaned her head there, bringing up her knees near her chin. "Logan--"

"Just do it, darlin'."

She sighed, and did it. He watched the woman that was behind her face slip away from him, until there was nothing in her eyes but a dull brown, which scared him more than he ever thought something so simple could.

The fact was, he was terrified. Somehow, for some reason, she had wanted him to stay after that first night at the mansion a couple months ago. Since then he'd actually been able to act like a man, especially around her, which wasn't easy, but she made him feel like something in his existence was almost worth while. Now if she got down into his deep dark thoughts she would see what he really was; she would see that he'd manipulated her into wanting him and that she was still manipulated. She would know that deep down inside all he really was was an animal, and she wouldn't want him any more. And that would kill him. "Darlin'?"

She shook her head, lips parting, apparently hearing him, but looking as if she was lost in thought. As she slipped further he gathered her closer, pulling her into his lap, securing her there more tightly than he would have ever ventured to do if she'd been fully conscious. He tucked her head under his chin, trying to envelope her tightly within himself while still avoiding her skin, closing his eyes and pressing his lips into her hair. He willed himself to go there, to be there with her, and for the first and last time in his life he wished he was Charles, if only that would help her.

"They poured it," she said wonderingly. "It was liquid."

"No," he hissed into her hair. "Not that, darlin'. Please, not that--" He frantically touched her scalp, trying to make her look at him, pay attention to him.

The skull that had suddenly begun to feel delicate was wrenched out of his hands, thrown back, lips pulled wide in a terrible, blood-curdling scream of pain that he had hoped against hope he would never, ever hear from lips like hers. "Come back," he shouted into her face, dragging her head back so that her eyes met his own. "Come back," he growled again, fiercely, trying to contain her convulsing with his arms. It wasn't working--she was lost in it, not coming back any time soon. "Find somethin' else, darlin'," he whispered savagely into her ear, jerking her suddenly frail seeming body so hard her bones surely rattled. "Find somethin' else."

Either she heard him or she thought the same thing, because she stopped shaking. The pain leaked out of her eyes and she even smiled a little. "Miyazaki, Kyushu. Here it is warm. I find peace with you, Mariko. Kiyasumeni."

Well sonuvabitch. Surely anything was better than when they'd poured that shit in him, but did she really have to go and root out the one woman he'd ever almost felt anything for--besides her--and used, just as he'd used her? Was she truly set on violating _everything_ that was his?

"Need you," she said raggedly, into his ear.

"Rogue?" The tone of her voice had changed; he could almost be sure she saw him now.

"Retsujou; this is you and me, Mariko. I cannot love you, but I can want you. Want to get inside of you." Marie was moving in his arms, adjusting herself to him, placing a knee between his thighs and the other against his hip--and riding his thigh--hard. He could smell her, her wet desire echoing a want that had once been his, that now she was living again, with a woman who was now dead.

Holy fuck. She had said she did things, weird things, but it had never occurred to him she meant sex things, intimate things, wild things, like what she was doing to him now. How the fuck was he supposed to just hold her and be there for her when she moved against him, drenched in the smell of desire, eyes rolled back and mouth slack with hunger? Fuck. It'd been difficult enough in the past smelling her want for him, but she never acted on it, ever, and that made it all easier, made him control himself. Now there she was, trapped in his god awful mind, reliving his twisted, black memories, and here he was, getting off on it, getting hard from the way she rhythmically moved against him.

Her voice changed again. "I don't give a shit. Get me the fuck outta this cock-sucking piece of--"

He closed his eyes and tugged her down beside him, getting her off his thigh as she again shifted gears. He wanted a safer position, so that it wouldn't happen again, but he realized that despite months of casual touching he suddenly didn't know how to touch her in a way that wasn't erotic. He finally just pressed against her side, burying his face in her hair and wrapping his leg around hers as she murmured obscenities and made small spitting sounds. He'd never heard her talk like that, but it was infinitely better than her screaming or her telling him in that raw, husky voice that she needed him.

"Not bloody likely, you little mother fucker." A pause, a new voice: "There are animals, Wolverine, which are a class below humans, and then there are mutants, a class below the animals. I will show you this. I will treat you like the animal you are and you will react like one, and you, too, will come to understand what you really are."

"Logan--" He knew that was her own voice, now, her own reaction. Only she, of all the people in the world, knew that name for him. She was crying now, crying as she had not done even when she'd felt them pour metal into her, crying for what that faceless voice--which she, too, knew--said it would do to him. "Logan . . . how could they--"

"Shh, baby. It's okay. It's okay; I'm here," Logan whispered into her ear, into her hair, her neck, her nape. "I'm here."

She stilled, perhaps hearing and sensing his voice, but she wasn't back, not even close. Her mind roamed on to more memories.

"They said you could do it. They said you were . . . creative."

Mother of God, have a little fuckin' mercy.

"They said you knew what I was for."

"Come back," Logan muttered helplessly into her hair, knowing that she wouldn't. Knowing, somehow, that she _wanted_ to see this, wanted to see what she had said and did through his memories, wanted to see how she had looked in his eyes when they brought her to him to mate him, wanted to see how it had been for him.

"Get me with child. Please. If you don't, they'll kill me. They said you could. They said it wouldn't hurt you. You can. You won't.--That's right, sweetheart, so take a hike." She moved into his voice savagely, and she cried now for them both, for herself and for him, for what had been done to them, and he buried himself in her hair, in her scent, in her body, willing her not to hate him for his thoughts then, knowing it was impossible, knowing nothing would be the same after this.

"I can't. They won't let me out of here until . . . and if you won't . . . oh please. Please. I want to live." A pause, a gasp. "You will have to show me. I've never done it before. I don't know how."

Darlin'--baby. Mine, sweet, child, beautiful, cherished, youth, innocence, hope--pity--warped by so many other thoughts he shouldn't be thinking: darlin'--baby, mine, sex, woman, hot, coveted, lust, hunger, love, and mine, all mine. "Don't, darlin'," Logan said softly, clasping her tighter to him, smelling her arousal grow. "Don't do this to yourself." His voice lowered until he barely knew if he spoke at all. "Don't do this to me."

"I am not afraid. Wait. What's your name? Logan. Logan. Logan, Logan, _Logan_, Loganloganlogan." Her body shuddered, and she began to make the little sounds he knew she would, reliving that terrible thing he never, ever wanted to have to think about, repeating the words that made him want to sink into her oblivion every time he heard them: "I want you, Logan."

At least she would know what he felt the instant she said those words. At least she would know, Logan thought, pressing his sweating forehead into the spot between her shoulder blades, clutching her convulsively. She would hate him when she came out of this, hate him and revile him, but maybe the fact that she'd given him reason to go on living would be some kind of solace to her. Maybe she wouldn't hate him all the way. Maybe she'd even forgive him, a little, though he doubted anyone could. Maybe just living on the other side of the world would suit her fine. Maybe he'd just go to Japan again, and maybe she'd even let him write every once in a while.

* * *

It went on like that, far into the night, although she appeared to have taken the brunt of it from the get-go. His other memories were violent or intense, usually both, but none like those first she had experienced.

They didn't know it, but it was a long night at the mansion, too. That first scream from Rogue had had Jean pegged at the door, used to awakening from the aura of nightmares and used to comforting them away, too. She heard some of the things that went on through that door, even though she tried--not too hard; they were loud, after all--not to listen. Mostly, she heard Logan's broken voice, responding to the girl's whispered mutterings, and she was glad, finally, that she had not made the mistake of choosing Logan over Scott. There was too much pain in that man to take with any kind of grace.

Both 'Ro and Scott came and went, 'Ro keeping her distance, respecting the privacy of the pain going on behind that closed door, but ready to offer her even temper, her gentle peace, should the door open; Scott bringing them both hot tea and pressing his lips together when he heard thrashing from inside the room. Jean knew he couldn't stand women's screams or sounds of pain; he had heard them too much in those years before the professor found him--Scott was the one that guided students and children, waking at the noise, back into their bedrooms, telling them that we all have nightmares. That we all, eventually, find sleep.

Somewhere, deep in their minds, these were the thoughts that Scott, Jean, Ororo and Charles Xavier were all thinking. Each of them had nightmares too.

Near morning they at last heard silence and they went to bed, the professor coaxing Jean away by telling her that she needed sleep, that he would be close by, sensing them, and that the worst had passed--though that was still yet to come. The professor knew as Jean did not that they could not always know everything, that in some cases they were helpless, that some people were better left to deal with the worst themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Kiyasumeni_ \- Japanese, "peace of mind"


	13. Our Chimeras

Logan didn't feel dawn. He only felt the woman in his arms suddenly stiffen, grit her teeth, and then begin to wildly shake. "Darlin'?" he asked, hopeful, knowing it was a lost cause.

Her head bent back in another scream, but this one was ten times worse, because there was no sound. Just dead eyes, curled lips, and strained cords standing out on her neck. He knew that feeling, knew of pain so great it could not even be voiced. He held her, helpless, not knowing what to do, not knowing what to say to bring her back. He had already begged her to come back; he had already told her to find something else, and she had returned to this, the cutting and the metal, returned to this last out of all there was of him in her. She had sought it out of her own volition, was facing it now, by herself, with a courage and a strength he thought he could never have.

And so all he could do was hold on tightly as she began to jerk, shaking and convulsing in his arms. Her neck threw back in that silent scream over and over again, and one moment her hands would be clenched so hard they were completely still, despite the jumping of her body, and in the next they would be clawing in rage, grappling for her own neck. He pulled her hands away and contained them, and she fought savagely, clawing, biting, kneeing and slugging him in the way of fighting he had made his--down, dirty, no holds bar. Then another spasm rippled through her, and all he could do was watch as she stiffened in intense, immediate, and searing pain, as her jaw clamped into her tongue and blood trickled out of her mouth, down her chin.

He crushed himself heavily into her side, forcing her body to line up against him. "Look at somethin' else, darlin'," he whispered hoarsely, knowing it was too late, knowing he couldn't help her, knowing even Charles couldn't help her now, knowing she was lost unless she could ride it out. When the next tremor hit her he held her in an iron grip and put his tongue in her mouth, tasting her blood; she bit down on it, hard, and he healed instantly. He rested there, against her mouth, knowing he was losing her and knowing he was helpless to stop it, and he began to kiss her frantically, savagely, with no attempt at gentleness, not really caring about her skin, wanting her to pull from him, wanting her to take from him--perhaps, it would shock her awake, bring her back to him.

"Come back, baby," he muttered raggedly, his lips leaving hers, his voice hoarse. She remained senseless, lost in his agony, and he felt fear rising in him, a kind of fear he hadn't felt in a long, long time. His hands roamed desperately over her, trying to awaken need in her, longing, trying to desperately take the things he needed from her, would always need, as she slipped further and further away from him. "Come back, Rogue. Don't leave me. Don't leave me, darlin'." His voice was choked and almost inaudible as he whispered a final plea. "Don't leave me all alone."

The convulsing, at least, had stopped--and suddenly, she arched in a long, sinuous way that was not produced by pain at all; he was sure of it. Then she groaned, a long, throaty groan, and his hands tightened where they were--one at her neck, one at her breast, his muscles clenched half with fear and half with desire. He thought he knew what she had found. Then she spoke, and he was sure of it.

"Touch me darlin'," she said, her voice deeper, and hoarse--though that might be from trying to scream.

There was only one person in the world he had ever called darling that he could remember.

Her voice continued. "Open for me, darlin'. Good, that's the way--open, yes, like that. Yes, darlin'--like that--like _that_\-- Open your legs for me, baby--your mouth, too, I want to be inside--inside--Move against me darlin'--want you, want you for my own, want you to say it--say it, darlin', _say_ it--"

Stay. The Fuck. Out.

He felt all control slip, knowing that she was going through his fantasies, knowing that she was seeing his fantasies of _her_, knowing that she was seeing all the things he wanted to do to her, make her do for him. God, after this, she _would_ know the monster he was. It didn't matter that she'd see how he wanted to take her gently, as a man, how he wanted to touch her and make her love him and make her want him all over again--and even that wasn't chaste; it was manipulation; it was usury.

But it was nothing against the other ways he wanted to take her--like an animal, hurting her, bruising her, making her scream on the edge of pain and pleasure, knowing that he had done it, that he would do it, that she was his to do it to, again, and again, and again, until he was satiated, until he could take no more from her--and then he would do it again, just so she would know, just so everyone would know, just so she would be sure.

"Rogue," he said, as she writhed and squirmed in his grasp, trying to find a way to alleviate the ache and arousal with thoughts not made for her body. "Rogue," he said again, voice raw with the restraint it took not to haul out and pummel her for looking at things he never meant for her to see, never wanted her to know, wanted to hide and keep locked from her forever. "Darlin', I'm so sorry," he said at last, brokenly. "I never meant for you to know. I never meant--"

Suddenly, her lips covered his own, and her kiss now echoed the one he had given her moments before in attempts to draw her out of misery. Her lips were so forceful and soft and sweet that he didn't even notice that there wasn't pull, that there hadn't been last time either. God, the thought of her in his fantasies, of her enacting his fantasies, made him so hard it hurt, despite the fact that he knew he'd lose her after this. He was a bastard. Delicate hands found his neck, then his head, insistently drawing her to him. Then her face sank into the pillow beside his head, and her legs straddled him, hips fitting into his.

"Don't do this, Rogue." He nudged her, but her hips were insistent; his own reflexively fit themselves into her. His control was slipping and he wanted her so badly and regretted her so badly that he was letting her touch him, letting himself, even, react to her, letting her act out his fantasies on him--deep, dark fantasies, of which he was ashamed. He was vulnerable to her as he had never been vulnerable to anyone. There was already a damp spot on her jeans between her legs, and as he grew impossibly more hard under her she rubbed against him eagerly, giving them the friction they both wanted.

"Don't," he said again, and put his hands on her hips to stop her. Suddenly she wiggled a little, as if uncertain, and he thrust her down reflexively into his aching erection, showing her a pace, a direction. God, she didn't even know what she was doing, and he was showing her. "Don't," he muttered again, and meant completely the opposite.

She jerked against him, again uncertain, and he guided her, showing her what he secretly wanted, drawing his hands down over her buttocks and lifting his hips a little to meet her, the tension her wet jeans were giving his sweats completely unbearable. The thought that he had almost lost her, that seconds ago he thought he might have had to face living without her, made him instinctively clamp his hands onto her hips, cradling her there, drawing her to him, hard.

Her head was thrown back, expression full of unfocused desire, eyes closed. He didn't know how often he dreamed of her under him, looking like that--Still, he plead with her, but his meaning changed. "Don't. Don't leave me, darlin'. Not ever." He grunted as he rocked against her, wetness in his sweats, now, too, aching for the wetness that matched his own, pulling her sex harder, closer, faster to him. "Darlin'," he muttered into her lips. "Rogue. I need you."--God baby, I wanna come inside of you--"I need you, Rogue--"

"Marie," she murmured.

He looked up into her eyes, then, which were wide awake.

That was it, he was dreaming. He was touching bare skin; she didn't hate him--wanted him, in fact, even awake; and she had finally given him her real name.

He held her hips still and for a single, still moment, he stared at her wonderingly. He drew his bare hand down over her face, fingers at her brow and then brushing down over her eyes, her nose, her lips, at last jerking her chin and jaw up in a suddenly tight grip. His hand was slick with her sweat and this wasn't just a wet-dream hard-on: he was undeniably awake--and so was she.

"Marie, is it?" he said, his voice dangerously low.

"Yes," she said simply, meeting his darkened eyes without fear.

"Well, Marie. Do you wanna tell me what the _fuck_ you think you're doin'?"

She lay draped across him, their hips still locked together, her knees on either side of him, but with one hand on her hip he was restraining all movement. He was propped up a little, not quite sitting up, against the headboard, and he held her head such that her neck craned at an odd angle and her back arched dramatically. She quivered with the strain of it, with her need for him, and she felt the answering coiled intensity in him--which he seemed to be completely ignoring at the present moment. "I came out of it," she said finally, "to this." She gestured vaguely with a hand. "I had put away all the painful memories, and I--I found myself escaping into your fantasies, and I thought you wouldn't want . . . so I--I was done. I pulled out, and you were--your hands were--"

"Like this?" he said savagely, dropping her chin and grinding her hips into his.

"Yes," she muttered into his collar bone. With agonizing slowness he rolled her hips against him again--and feeling him like that, feeling his sweats, damp with her wetness and his, feeling the aching flesh beneath throbbing for her--she found herself gasping, "Please," and hating the sound of her voice. "Please, don't stop."

"Marie," he said, simply, harshly, knowing it sounded more like a plea than anything else. "What are you tryin' to do to me?" He bodily lifted her, hips and all, off of him, and stood up. She watched anger run through his still body, watched the tenuous control it took to tip the open whiskey bottle and pour himself another shot. He downed it before speaking, baring his teeth at the taste. "When were you plannin' on tellin' me I could touch your skin?" he said finally.

She swallowed, knowing from his fantasies how desperately he had wanted to touch her without anything between them, even when her skin was still dangerous, even if it could kill him--just to feel her bare skin, and selflessly, just to give her the sensation of being touched. Knowing how he hadn't ever, ever planned on telling her that, to save her the feeling of ever once feeling inadequate--if ever, in a lifetime, it would be possible to become her lover.

"I was going to tell you--tonight. That's why I picked tonight to--to sort through the memories and . . . and everything." She sighed. "I learned to control it weeks ago--but I wanted practice, before I told you. I wanted to be completely sure it was safe; I didn't want it suddenly going wrong on me or anything. I was afraid that there would be an accident, if I had to go through something really bad, and I reached for you--that's why I wanted to do this when I had control of it. I was going to tell you except you were so--so impatient to get it over with, and I wanted the time to be just right. I thought . . ." She took a deep breath, and exhaled into her knees, which she had pulled up close to her chest, as if to wrap herself away from him. "I was thinking that afterwards, maybe I could tell you. It was supposed to be a surprise. I thought we could . . . celebrate."

God, celebrate her being able to touch? With _him_? There was only one thing he wanted to do, to celebrate that--actually, there were many things, but all of them followed the same train of thought. Hell, even without the word 'celebrate' added into the pot he was already consumed by the single idea of what he wanted to do with her, now that he could touch her.

And all of it, all of them, were things he had resolved never to do with her. "What is it you want from me?" he said finally, turning to her, opening his arms like a man lost. He had asked her that question once, months ago, and now he wondered whether he really had gotten a straight answer from her. He had learned things about her in the night that had passed that he wasn't sure he understood. "What did you want from me, really, when you first found me?"

"I wanted you to take me," she said finally, sighing. "You know that. You know how much I wanted it. How I was willing to let you take me and touch me even though you had no idea who I was. I wanted you to take me how you took me when they brought me to you, telling me you would know what I was for. I wanted you to take me again because these past six years I have been empty. I never felt like a woman again until that first night at the cabin motel, when you began to touch me again."

His eyes were widening in fear, and even as she spoke, desire seeped out of him faster than blood from a wound. There was horror in his face, abject and complete horror.

"You knew this," she insisted, not heeding all the tell-tale signs in his face. Waking up to his hands grinding her hips into his hadn't made it easy--she still wanted him in this way and was ashamed of it, because he seemed so often to be above it. This shame made her speak, made her insist, made her punish herself and try to punish him too. "You knew that I wanted you to touch me that night; I told you so."

"Do you still want it, Marie?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Yes," she said softly, letting her eyes close. "Yes, I want that from you. I will always want that from you."

She didn't know what she expected, but it was not the click of the door opening, not the sound of him walking away from her down the hall, not, several minutes later, the sound of Scooter's bike, which Logan loved to steal, revving up and driving away.


	14. Love and Squalor

He came back a week later. He did not speak to her that morning; he did not breakfast with her; he did not walk with her. He wasn't there that night for her to talk to, and that night was lonelier than the past week had been, knowing he was somewhere in the mansion and knowing he didn't want to see her.

Marie sat fully dressed in the darkness of her bed that night, still hoping against hope that he would come, that things would be alright between them. She would settle for the ease of the past few months; they didn't have to take any steps forward; they could stay that way, just together, just how they had been. She knew that he was not angry at her, despite his words when he had realized that she was perfectly awake and moving against him of her own volition.

He was not angry at her, though, but himself; he was angry at his own inability to stop her, to stop himself. It didn't matter that his reaction had been gentle; it mattered that it hadn't been controlled--and to him, that was everything. He hated the animal in him that made him lose control; he reviled it; he punished it--she knew because she had done the same thing while she let his mind take over. She hadn't seen everything in him. She didn't want know everything he knew and she didn't need to. She just needed to feel some of the worst so that she could control it, and some of the best so that she could stand it.

Nor was he angry that she hadn't told him about being able to control her mutation. He would accept and believe her explanation.

What had made him leave was simple, cold fear. Part of it was the fact that he could touch her--he had considered her safe, in a way, because there was so much care involved in touching her--he thought he would never lose control, never not be able to stop. Now . . . well, she knew that just this simple accident of her and 'bare skin' existing in the same thought together drove him positively over the edge, and he was afraid he wouldn't be able to handle it.

Most of all, it frightened him that she wanted him to touch her the way he had before. There was so much guilt attached to that one act in his life that in some ways, it molded the life he lived now. She hadn't wanted to tell him, but she had needed to be honest--and there were other needs, besides loyalty and honor, that were hers, and hers alone. What she had said was true. She had searched for six years for that touch from him again, and she still wanted it.

She heard the click of her door and stiffened, sensing who it was in the darkness, not knowing what was going to happen, but feeling little shivers go all the way through her to her toes, feeling anticipation thread through her and coil somewhere low in her stomach. "Logan," she said, getting out of her bed and flicking the lamp on.

He pulled the door closed behind him, but other than that, he didn't move. He simply stood there, tension wrought in every feature of his face, jumping through every muscle across his arms, his neck, his chest.

She stepped toward him, arm half reached to touch him. Her hands were still encased in gloves; no one except Charles and Logan knew that she could control her mutation and she didn't want to tell anyone else, not yet. "Logan--please. Don't look like that."

His mouth was set in a grim line; his shoulders sloped as if defeated. His eyes had a deadness she had only seen once before--the night he had first recognized her face and had tried to flee the memory. The look had scared her badly then, and it terrified her now. "Please," she murmured, and gently touched his arm.

It was the only time she had touched him of her own volition while fully aware of exactly everything she was doing, and he knew it. He heaved a great, shuddering sigh, and caught her wrist. His other hand plucked at her fingers, and slowly, in a single, fluid movement, he pulled the glove off.

Her lips opened, trembling with surprise that he was touching her, surprise that the removal of this simple article of clothing could be so sensual, surprise at the way he watched the creamy skin of her arm being revealed as if he had never seen an arm before--studying, empty, almost objective. He gently placed that arm by her side and let go of her wrist, and then reached for her other hand. He brought her fingers to his lips, as if to kiss the very tips of them, and met her eyes. They widened and her heart rate quickened as he delicately took the fabric on the tip of her middle finger between his teeth. He gently began to tug with his mouth, eyes still holding hers, easing her other fingers out with his hands, pulling the glove off inch by painstaking inch.

"Logan?" she breathed, both wanting explanation and wanting him not to stop whatever it was he was going to do to her. He had not touched her like this before, not since she first met him again. The hunger was building in his eyes, darkening them, giving them expression, giving them life in a way that made her half afraid.

He placed that arm back by her side too, and then his hands were at her waist, steady, just holding her away from him--and evenly slipping up, the rough pads of his fingers drawing her shirt with them, revealing longer and longer lengths of soft--touchable--skin, her navel, her waist, her ribs. He nipped at that fabric that stretched across her breasts, and pulled up there, too, thumbs under her breasts and hands circling her rib cage. "Arms, darlin'," he reminded her, patient, the ghost of a smile tracing his features.

It was the smile that allowed her to give herself over to him. Wonderingly, still unsure, she lifted her arms, and he pulled her shirt the rest of the way off, and then he set to work on her skirt, unzipping the side with a movement that was agonizingly slow, then placing a hand on either hip and working down each side little by little down her hips until the whole thing simply slipped past her thighs and landed in a puddle on the floor. He leaned closer, arms around her, and she wanted to sink into his embrace, but with a snap and then the release of her bra, he leaned back away, and pulled the satin down, freeing her breasts.

She felt a tremor go through her, watching him look at her. She did not know how she could let him come into her room after an entire week, speak two words, and suddenly begin to touch her in this way--and yet she had never even considered this simple act of undressing, never considered anyone would do it, would want it, would even think of doing it to _her_\--

He heaved a sigh and settled a gentle hand around her neck, slowly guiding her back. She took little steps backward until she was suddenly sitting on the edge of the bed, and he kept pressing, laying her down, so that her feet were on the ground but her torso lay back on the bed. He sank to the floor, between her knees, and his fingers touched the elastic of her underwear. "Up," he said simply, hunger evident in that single word.

The command in his voice flared like heat inside of her. She would ask questions later--maybe. She would allow herself to think this was right, that he wanted this. And so she lifted her hips up for him, so that he could gently catch the fabric under her bottom and inch that down, too. If anything, he was slower in this, pressing down the bunched fabric on one side of her leg, and then the other, nipping the middle strip of fabric with his teeth, letting hot air catch on her sex, rubbing her legs gently as he did so.

Finally they were off, and she felt herself quiver, as if in release, the sweet strain of having his head between her legs gone. He stood over where she lay on the bed, and his hand found her neck again. "Up," he said again, simply. She sat up, finding herself unable, really, to disobey. "Stand up," he whispered, still standing between her legs, breath sinking into her scalp. She wore nothing, now, but his tags. He half drew her up as she stood, and she tried to peer into the shadows of his face, to catch eyes that were focused at a spot on the wall behind her.

There was guilt in those eyes, an incredible, lonely guilt, and the hunger of the animal inside him. She knew from having his mind inside of hers that of his darker fantasies, there was one that played over and over again in his mind. She knew that it had a child's face, ratty, tangled hair, bony shoulders, shallow ribcage, and a fifteen year old's body. He hated how he wanted her then, how he still wanted her, how he had made her want him then and how she still wanted him now.

He reached for her, filling his hand with her right breast. She shuddered—she had never been touched there, ever, skin to skin, and now his thumb lightly grazed her nipple--"Is this what you want?" he asked, voice harsh and hollow. "Is this what you wanted to ask me for?"

She wanted to tell him no, that he was not supposed to be guilty, or angry with himself, or afraid; he was supposed to like it too; this was supposed to fix him too--but he was touching her now, the hollow of her hip, her throat, threading a line down from her waist, and she couldn't even form coherent thought. The fingers of one hand lay claim to the arch of her clavicle, the length of her throat, her scalp, the shape of her lips and the soft give of them as he pressed a finger between them; the other hand flicked at the curls below her navel—skillful, sure, teasing and dropping lower each time.

Then she felt the fingers dip into the wetness between her legs and she threw her head back and bit down, struck by shame and a terrible temptation. Perhaps she could use his guilt to make him keep touching her. Perhaps it was the only way anyone ever would touch her at all.

"Yes," she breathed, as if the answer to his question was called up directly from between her thighs. He pressed her against the wall, dragging wet fingers around the circle of a hip bone and up to her nipple, where he pinched, pulled, prodded until a soft, "oh" escaped her lips. His other hand, palm flat against her hip, raked up her flesh to cup her other breast. He roughly plucked at the nipple there, too, coaxing it to be hard for him, harder than was bearable for her.

His touch was harsher now, the animal channeled into his hands. He stood beside her, his own hips thrusting into the wall, and yet his hands were attuned only to her—dipping again between her legs and spreading her own wetness over her with touches that were certain, sure, and dangerous against nerves throbbing too tightly.

She had asked for his touch and he gave her this because he thought it was all he could give. In the end he would do anything she wanted, even if to do so was to punish himself for making her want it in the first place. He punished himself by using her, by making them both feel ashamed, by seducing her without letting himself give her his love, his warmth, or his desire, because he believed he had twisted her so badly that this was what she wanted, and that there was nothing in him strong enough to overcome the monster taking him over.

"Is this what you wanted?" he asked again, and bit her throat, letting his tongue trail down to slowly nibble on her nipple, which had grown far too sensitive for it. He let her go and moved his mouth to her ear, licking the shell of it with a sure flick of his tongue. "Is this it?" he muttered, his voice gone hoarse with both desire and shame.

In some way, him touching her like this was right; she wasn't woman enough to deserve anything else. For six years her fantasies had been born of one terrible act in which free will had been stripped from her, her partner forced into it, not even wanting it, driving himself to become an animal because of how awful it had been. Her body's reaction to his guilt was evidence enough that she deserved this--she wanted him; she wanted him even though he was guilty to touch her, ashamed, wanted him even though he didn't want her.

"Yes," she answered. It was only a gasp, barely breathed, but she said it, and she knew she would keep saying it if he kept asking. She wanted him and she wanted him in every way possible and she could not stop the desire pooling between her legs.

As if hearing her thoughts, he sank down, his head again between her legs. His tongue found her inner thigh, and then his teeth. His lips met the lips of her sex, and she bit down on her tongue so hard it bled in order to keep her hands from pushing him further into her. It was a lost cause. Her hands met in his hair, raked across his scalp, clutched fistfuls, trying to force him further in as he played games of entry on her lips there, nipping, pressing in the tip of his tongue--licking with the flat of it, breathing and blowing her there. Then, slowly, the hot muscle of his tongue began to press its way inside of her, and she let loose a cry. "Logan--"

Knowing she was close, knowing she was impossibly close and dripping with need for him, he slammed her hips against the wall. He rose and suddenly his face was even with hers; his erection pressed through his jeans hard into her and his hand settled against her throat. It was the first moment she could truly read that he was not in control at all. "Say it," he said, his voice ragged, breathing uneven. He jerked her hips against his, knowing how much she wanted something, any kind of pressure there, knowing that he could do or make her say anything just by tempting her with giving it to her. He tangled the tags around her neck into his other hand and jerked. "Say it. You know what I wanna hear. Say it."


	15. Redemption and Prayer

She swallowed, realizing, suddenly, that this was something he needed from her. She knew from his hold on the tags what he wanted, what the animal inside him wanted, even now. Every fantasy of being forced to take that dark eyed girl with the child's body ended like this. Somehow, in some way, she would say the words that drove him wild, made him mad with need, with excitement, with terrible possessive power and lust. And yet it was those same words that blinded him with this guilt--the fact that he had made her want him.

In the end it was her pity that broke her, that gave her strength. He needed her to want him, to want all of him, because no one else could; no one else knew him like she did; no one else could understand. The fact that she could give him this empowered her, made her realize that he always, in every way, had seen her as a woman. Even now, he saw her that way, and needed her that way.

She had realized she could give him something their first night here, when he had both injured and saved her. That, she guessed ruefully, was what they were to each other. Somehow, the memory of what lay between them continually reared to hurt them, but he healed it, always, with his touch--and she did the same for him, with her forgiveness. His quiet, careful touches since that night had given her all the strength she would ever need to forgive him this night.

She put her hands on either side of his face, which made him flinch, and said softly, "I want you to touch me. I do. But I don't want this." She covered his wrist, covered the raging, throbbing pulse there, and gently loosened the contorted fingers that clenched the tags so tightly. She looked into his eyes, pulling his face toward hers, and said what he wanted her to say, what he dreamed for her to say, ached for her to say, dreaded her to say, and yet she said it differently. "I want _you_, Logan."

A shudder went through him as he jerked his hands away from her under her touch. "I can't--oh Marie--I can't--" She watched the animal, the rage, the impossibly demanding hunger fall away, revealing a face raw with the need for her that she had discovered in him. He sank, slipping, kneeling before her, his head resting just below her navel and his open lips pressed into her hip bone, mindlessly planting little kisses there, murmuring over and over again: "Marie. My--Marie. Marie."

Her hands found his hair again, this time combing, soothing, wondering how it was possible for a man to have such an incredibly sensual skull. "I want you," she repeated. "All of you. I want your touch, but I want the man behind it too. I want . . ." Her hand clenched convulsively at the back of his head, gripping his scalp, pressing his forehead into her belly. "I love you, Logan."

"Don't," he said savagely, drawing in a quick breath. "Don't even say it. Don't even _think_ it, Marie."

"But I do," she said simply. She ran her hands through his hair in attempts to draw his head up, but he pressed his brow further into her soft skin, as if he sought strength, there, below her navel, his breath sinking into the curls between her thighs.

"How can you even . . . Marie, I'm not for you. I'm not even--"

"No," she said, putting her hand flat on the top of his head, saving him from saying it. "You're not broken, Logan. You're not. If you are, then I am too. You're a man and I love you. Why is that so impossible to believe?"

"I'm not--" he sucked in breath and hissed, "a man, Marie. Not in the ways you think."

She knew how much saying that cost him, how it stripped him of everything he guarded most ferociously, how it was worse than turning himself out naked and weaponless into a snowy, barren wasteland. She knew how he would never, ever say it--except to her, this once, hoping, desperately, that she would understand it. She felt wild for a moment, not knowing how to deal with that admission from him, that thought from him. She willed herself to take it, to understand it, to say, simply, "Are too," with a petulance she didn't mean to add.

At last he looked up at her. "Marie," he said simply, and touched the dark curls where her thighs met, his fingers reverent. "If you knew what you are to me . . ."

She felt her breath come faster. "What am I to you?"

Goddess, angel, heroine, savior, beloved.

"Darlin', you know I ain't good with words. It's just if you knew what it's like, kneelin' in fronta you, bein' between your legs and lookin' up at you, you'd know why I can't--

She sucked in her breath at his words, unable to stop herself from asking. "What is it like?"

Prayer.

His eyes slid away from hers, and his hot, quick breath settled between her legs as he looked down. He tried to explain that powerful feeling of prone reverence and timelessness in the only way he could. "It feels like you could--like you could forgive me." He shook his head. "Not now. Next lifetime, maybe."

He was staring at her matted curls, studying, avoiding her face. She pulled his head back so he had to look into her eyes. "Logan. I do forgive you. I forgave you then and I forgave you again when I came to know you. In my mind, we are equal. There is not even anything to forgive."

His eyes slid away from hers, head sinking. He remained still for a long time, his lips again at her hipbone, breathing in and out of the hollow below it. "They told me you were dead," he said at last. "They told me I destroyed you. They told me I raped you. They told me you begged 'em to use you. They told me they used you again, and again, and again, and you loved it, you wanted more--" She was shaking her head, her eyes growing wide with horror, but he continued in a dead monotone, barely over a whisper--"They told me you tried to forget me by gettin' 'em inside of you. They told me you faked it all. They told me you faked it when you said you wanted it. They told me you forgot me. They told me I didn't rape you but I raped your mind--"

"No," she said, shaking her head, tears running out of the corners of her eyes. The Logan in her mind rose in answer, assaulting her with his guilt. "Stop, please. Stop." She sank down beside him on the floor, pulling him so that he was half in her arms and she was half in his, so that they held each other. "Please don't."

"That's why," he said, threading his hand through the white lock of her hair. "I think--I know--that they were wrong about alotta things. But in some ways . . . in some ways they were right. I twisted you; I used you--you don't even know how I used you, and now it's all jumbled up, and I can't tell one way from another, and I don't know what ta believe--"

"Believe _me_," she said, leaning in, her lips murmuring against his mouth. "You forget that I know your fantasies. I know that deep down in there there's one that plays over and over again, like a broken record." His entire body stiffened, swallowing. He knew the one she meant, but she went on anyway, so he knew she knew all of it. "I know that it's me, that day they brought me to you. I know that in each fantasy you take me differently, sometimes even more gently than you did that day and sometimes so hard and so many times that I'm crying and bleeding and begging you to stop, and at the same time still saying I want you."

She paused, watching a tremor that he tried to still go through him. She settled against his chest, making a crook in his arm for her. "I love that about you, Logan," she said at last. "I love that you wanted me so badly, that you still want me badly, that you still want me as I was then sometimes. And I love that in all the ways you could have used that want, you took me then the way you did, to make me feel good, to make it easy for me. I dreamed of your touch for six years, Logan, and of course I still want it. I will always want it, as I said--and I'll take it any way I can get it."

She sat up, moving away from him. "But I also want the man behind that touch, Logan. I've wanted him for a long time--at first, I thought he must have been a fantasy, but then I came to know you, and to understand that you _are_ him, Logan; you are that man. I know the man in you, Logan; I know him and I want him." She smiled, looking away, and added, "For my own. Just mine."

He was silent for a long time. He was flailing around inside, as if lost--unable to accept her love, her strength, unable to deserve her. And yet, he needed her; he couldn't live without her, didn't even know how. Just the thought of her was almost enough to keep the animal at bay, just touching her helped him feel whole again. He could never trust himself, that darkness inside of him--and yet, he trusted her, and she, for unfathomable reasons, trusted him. And because he had always had an instinct for self preservation, he had to take what he could get--even though she was wrong, he had to trust her trust, and perhaps, just perhaps, her strength would be enough to help him give her what she needed, and he would be able to live as a man, though an animal would always lurk below the surface--hidden, hated, a monster.

At last he shook his head and stood, and she glanced up, but his face was lost in shadow. Strong hands grasped her elbows and pulled her up after him, and he stood looking down at her for an instant before his eyes once again slid away. "Take a shower, Marie," he said finally.

She blinked. "What?"

He met her confused eyes, and he said, his voice low and raw, "I believe you. I accept you forgivin' me--even though it's crazy." He met her eyes again for a single moment. "I won't ever touch you again with guilt on my hands." He wanted her to wash it off of her, and the command cost him far more than an apology ever could. She knew he loved the smell of him on her, knew he loved her wetness for him drying on her, and in any other circumstance he'd never go tell her to wash him off. He'd have her smelling like that every waking hour--and every sleeping one, too--if he could have his way. She nodded, once, willing to obey, and this was her forgiveness.

They stood like that for several moments, his eyes apologizing for everything, regretting this night, hating that the first time he touched her had been in this way. And she stood, loving him, forgiving him, and his eyes hungrily took in her forgiveness, her naked body, the hated tags between her breasts, and her love. At last, she blinked, and reached out her hand, her finger tips brushing his chest. She swallowed. "I still want you to touch me, Logan," she whispered at last.

Suddenly he pulled her closer to him and buried his lips in her hair. "I'm gonna touch you, darlin'--but it's gonna be a like a man, like you said." She sighed and buried her face in his chest, and his lips moved through her hair, smelling it, tasting it. "I'm gonna touch you how we both want it, baby."

One hand remained chastely at her waist while the other stroked up through her hair and pressed the heel into her nape, cradling her skull with his broad palm. His voice inched up a couple of degrees, but it remained soft, as if he sought to comfort her, himself, or both of them. "I'm gonna make you come, darlin'. It's gonna feel so good, darlin', good for you." His arms tightened, but he didn't press her closer. "I need--time, just a little while, darlin'. Just wait, for me, baby. Real soon, then it's gonna be good baby; soon, then I'll make it good for us."

She pulled back, the corner of her mouth quirking. "Promise?"

One of his brows shot up toward his hair line. He slipped his arm from her waist and gently, with utter certainty, templed his hand on the small of her back, and pushed, once. Her hips bucked lightly against his. "You doubt it, kid?"

She felt a blush creep up her cheeks, and ducked her head. "I didn't mean . . . I meant do you promise it's going to be soon?"

How come she still wanted it after what he'd done? She accepted everything and just kept right on giving. It only made him want her more. That and that little blush--How come she still blushed when he did little things like that, and in other things she was so uninhibited? God, he didn't know how he got her but he _wanted_ her--

He pulled her hips closer, showing her she wouldn't have to wait long, showing her how much he needed her. She willingly followed the way he guided her; she even pulled him into her a little too. Uninhibited, like he'd thought, and he--he--was going to be the one to make her come, and he--and _that_ was the wrong train of thought, bub. "Yeah, darlin'. Real soon. I promise."

She felt his insistence in the length of him pressed against her. She buried her face in his shoulder, hiding both her immediate desire and the silly blush staining her cheeks. "I didn't have any doubt that it'd be good, you know," she murmured finally, voice muffled.


	16. Talk and Reaction

"We heard you that night, Rogue. I heard you scream. I felt you."

Marie tucked white hair behind her ear. "I'm fine, Jean. Really, I am, but thanks for your concern." The red-head looked skeptical, and Marie sighed. "I needed to deal with the minds my mutation pulls out. He helped me. Really, he did."

"He left you," Scott corrected her stiffly, his voice wooden with anger.

She shrugged, shoulders liquid. "It doesn't matter. He came back. He always does."

"He was back for one shitty measly day--"

"He'll come back again."

Scott leaned forward over the table, his voice gentle, but hard with anger underneath. "And how do you know that?"

Marie shrugged again. "He left me his these," she said at last, tugging on the metal around her neck, hoping that if they had some tangible proof they would leave her alone. They were proof--he would always come back for these, for what they represented had been done to them--but now he would come back for more. "He'll come back for them."

"And _when_ he does--" Scott stopped suddenly, and frowned. Marie knew that Jean had just given him a mental reprimand against his threats. In the last few months their buried conversations had become more obvious to her. It made her like them more; there were actually many pissy, Scott-like things Scott exerted will-power never to say, and many moments when he didn't control himself as well but Jean's gentle reassurance reprimanded him. Marie thanked Jean for that now.

Ororo sighed. "It is not whether he will that worries us," she said gently. Marie frowned. She knew 'Ro hadn't planned on getting involved when Scott and Jean had cornered her and invited--rather, dragged--her over to their table this morning, and she had been silently thankful for it. Frankly, she didn't see that Logan--especially what went on between Logan and her--was any of their business, and the Logan in her had a rather feral agreement with her on that point.

At Marie's frown 'Ro reached an impulsive hand to cover hers. "It is his leaving that is the concern, his leaving in a time of your need. We do not reproach him, Rogue," she said, flicking a glance at Scott, who grimaced. "We simply wish to know that you are truly well."

"I'm okay, thank you," her voice was honest, open and sincere. "Really, thank you for being concerned." Marie stood, glancing at Scott. "The rest is none of your business."

She turned and walked out of the dining room. She wanted to reassure them, but she also knew they hadn't any of the reason she did to believe what she did. She also didn't want to get into a pissing match with Scott, and the Logan in her mind was all set for it, so she simply left.

Scott shook his head. "I don't understand her. I don't understand why she even thinks he'll come back."

"Did you see her hands?" Jean asked suddenly.

"What? Of course I saw her hands, they . . ."

"No gloves," Ororo said, suddenly understanding Marie's behavior, Marie's belief.

Scott slowly closed his eyes behind his glasses and put his head in his hands. "I'm an idiot."

["Indeed,"] Jean thought at him, and hid her smile behind a bite of eggs. "None of us noticed either, love," she said gently. "But I guess it's why she thinks he'll come back. He'll be able to touch her."

"God, that bastard? Touching her?" Scott grit his teeth, slowly seething. "He'll rip her apart."

"He'll make her whole," Ororo said quietly.

They'll make each other whole, Jean thought, but only thought it to herself.

* * *

He hadn't told her he was leaving, exactly, but she had assumed he would. He had said he needed time. He hadn't disappeared suddenly, either, just went back to his room as she showered and packed his few things, and after that let her watch him walk out, only acknowledging that she watched by catching her eyes once, his own full of promise.

Soon.

That promise gave her the confidence to deal with her teachers, peers, and friends, even. It would take time, she knew; the final resolution of what had happened so long ago would not come suddenly. She knew he believed it would never come; she knew he believed it couldn't.

She believed that she could give it to him--she just didn't know how.

And yet he was giving her a chance to try; he was giving _them_ a chance, and simply: he was going to try. She was filled with a quiet happiness she hadn't felt since those days so many years ago when things had been simpler, under the Mississippi heat and her parents' care. Even then though, she had been restless, unsure of herself--now she felt only stillness, and inner strength she didn't know she had, and she hoped it would be enough to be with him the way she wanted to be.

He came back in the same way that he had left. It had been nearly a week, and she was standing in the woods surrounding the mansion, closing her eyes and taking in the rocks rising up behind her and the little pool of water before her, and suddenly he was there, without greeting, simply standing beside her, simply meeting her eyes, the same simple promise burning in his own. She turned and smiled, a deep, real smile that did strange things to him in every part of him, the heat in his eyes kicking up a notch.

His want for her had never left, never changed. It remained there, calling to him, filling him more than he had at first thought possible, giving him more ideas of things he wanted to do with her--not just sex things. He wanted to show her the northern night skies. He wanted to swim in the cool summer nights with her. He wanted to take her to that deep, silent place in the woods that he had made his own. He'd never wanted to bring anyone into that before, but he wanted her there, alone, away from other eyes, belonging to him. He wanted to wake up beside her and he wanted to watch her drink her coffee; he wanted her to dance; he wanted to make her laugh. He wanted to do all these things with her and to her, and the greatest thing about her was that she made him feel like he could.

Wondering at her, that she could do that to him, he fingered the white thread of her hair, tugging it a little, pulling it to his lips. If possible, she smiled wider. "I kinda like it," she said softly, running her finger down the lock of her hair to meet his fingers. "I like having you in my head."

He grunted in acknowledgement, watching as her hand opened his, letting go her hair and drawing his hand to her heart. "I like having you here, too," she said, touching his fingertips lightly to her chest.

He flattened his hand over her breast and his other arm wrapped around her waist, drawing her closer to him. "I like bein' there, darlin'."

She was glad he was accepting this, accepting them. For him it was as if he had no other choice; being this way with her was what he had secretly dreamed of for so long and now that it was upon him he couldn't help himself.

Her hands found his shoulders and lightly skated down to his stomach. Then they dipped behind his belt and she suddenly pulled his hips into hers. "Here, too," she said, voice husky. She could feel him now, against her, evidence that he was already aroused, as if she could have possibly misread the look in his eyes.

"Watch it darlin'," he said, his hands finding her hips. They both knew who was in control of their mutual position _now_. Suddenly, he chuckled. "You gotta be patient. I said soon, didn't I?"

She bit her lower lip. "Whatever you say, sugar."

Or not so in control. His brow immediately quirked, and, if possible, he became even harder than he was already. "Sugar?" he said, voice half-incredulous.

"Yeah, sure. Sugar, sweet thing, honey, snook--"

He jiggled her hips against him with his hands, and that shut her up pretty damn quick. "Stop that."

She peered up at him, suddenly serious. "I used to call people that--back where I'm from. When I was happy, when I was with someone I liked, that's what I'd call them. I won't if you don't like--"

"Like it?" he said hotly into her ear, one leg moving to force her legs open. "Baby, I'm gonna make you scream it."

She smiled into his neck. "Oh yeah? Tell me about it, sugar."

He jerked against her, voice suddenly a growl. "You say that one more time and I'm gonna make you scream it so hard you ain't even gonna be able ta say it again afterwards." He paused, considering. "Ever."

She put her arms around his neck and smiled even wider. Shit. He loved making her smile like that. "That a promise?"

"That's a threat."

"Humph. I'll remember that," she whispered into his ear, voice sultry, and planted her lips on his throat. Suddenly, her head caught up and she nipped the lobe of his ear.

"Darlin'," he said roughly, making her hips roll across his thigh for a moment, agonizingly slow. She made a little sound and caught her breath. "You're makin' me crazy."

"That _is_ the general idea. So,"--sugar--she didn't say it, but they both heard her wait for it--"how soon is soon? Is it about--right now?"

"What's got you so impatient?" he asked, a lazy grin beginning to spread over his face, completely satisfied. He'd been back to her about a sum total of three minutes, and his woman was already wet for him, asking for him, and smelling like just about the sexiest thing on the face of the earth. She made thing so easy--teasing like this, not having to talk about what had happened only a few days ago, drawing him into this interplay as if they knew each other inside out--which, in some ways, they did.

"Well now--I think . . . you. Yep. That's got to be it. See, first you make me wait. And don't get me wrong--" sugar--"I'll wait for you a helluva long time--but it doesn't exactly make a girl patient. Then you open up my legs and start me riding you like this, and you're obviously gettin' me really wet and ready for _something_, so naturally I just assume--"

He stopped her words with his mouth--gently, because he was pretty sure the reason she was sassing him was because she wanted him to shut her up roughly. Still, it took a lotta damn gall to sass the Wolverine, and inwardly, he laughed. He bit her lower lip gently and let her mouth go. "Didn't know you had such a sharp tongue, kid."

She licked her lips, her breath hot, her voice not quite as steady as she wanted it to be. "Well, it's not so sharp if it gets used, if you know what I mean."

He grunted, and dropped his voice into a throaty whisper. "I'll remember that, darlin'," he said, echoing her earlier words.

"Yeah. Do." She looked up at him, the teasing gone, playfulness gone, just the wide, soft eyes he remembered. "When, Logan?"

He felt the answering heat flare within himself, watching her become completely vulnerable to him, watching her show her need for him. He pulled her closer to him, slipping his thigh out from between her legs and simply standing beside her, pressing the length of her into him. "Real soon, darlin'," he said, and his voice was raw now because he couldn't help it. "I wanna talk to Chuck, and set some things straight with him, then you and me--we gotta do that too, babe. There're some things I wanna talk to you about."

She stayed still in his arms for a moment, then kissed him lightly, chastely, on the cheek. "Well?" she said. "Get a move on. Charles is already waiting, you know."

He chuckled. "Yeah. Better get goin'," he said, stepping back and flashing her a wicked grin. "Chuck's brain is probably gettin' fried listenin' ta me think about ya."


	17. Bare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sex cabin belongs to [Terri](http://www.peephut.org/fics.html) (I think) and she is aware of the appropriation.

When she came into his room that night she knew he'd been waiting for her. He was pacing, barefoot, padding across the room, and stood perfectly still when he knew that she had entered. It was quite obvious that he was uncomfortable. She'd known he didn't like talking that much, that trying to explain who or what he was was not only painful--and pointless--but private. And if you were gonna talk about anything else, that was pointless too--you didn't need to talk about other people because other people should look after their own shit, and you didn't need to talk about the weather, 'cause who gave a fuck about the weather?

She settled into his sagging leather chair--the one only he ever sat in--and propped up her feet. "So, sugar, what'd you talk to Charles about?"

He flashed her a dangerous look and she decided to subside, but she had meant to put him more at ease, and was successful. He met her eyes and said simply, "Us."

She blinked, and set both feet on the floor. "Why?" she asked finally, her voice small.

He sat on the foot stool before her, her knees between his own. His hand drifted up toward her cheek. "Because, Marie, I want to--" He dropped his hand and let it settle on her knee, rubbing little circles on her there through her slacks. "I wanna make love to you, Marie," he said finally, seemingly fascinated by that knee, by the movements his hand was making on it.

His words touched her, starting a fire in her chest that slowly melted down to spread between her legs, but she said only, "I know." She looked at his bent head, at the way his hand soothingly rubbed her knee, only ever flicking just a couple inches up her thigh, and sighed. He certainly wasn't offering any more information on his own. "What does Charles have to do with it?" she asked, a little sharply. It was their own business, and something in her didn't like having Charles know about it, didn't like having anyone know, wanted it to be theirs, just theirs. She had thought he felt the same way.

The fact was, he did, and she understood when he spoke again, his hand creeping up her thigh to examine the crease between her leg and torso. "I wanna make love to you Marie," he said again, at last looking back up at her. "I don't wanna have to deal with anythin' or anyone gettin' in the way. I thought some of the people here--Chuck included--might try to stop us, or . . ."

He slid his other hand up too, his thumbs meeting between her legs and his middle fingers reaching around her upper thighs and lower glut muscles. "I dunno, Marie. I told Chuck how I wanted it to be with us as regards them, how it was gonna be or we'd leave. I know ya don't always exactly like me ta speak for ya, but I didn't wantcha to have any kind of trouble. I didn't want anyone tellin' ya I was bad for you. I already know that," he said, eyes hungrily watching hers. "You already know that, too, 'cept ya don't seem to 'xactly care too much, and if that's the case I ain't gonna stand in your way, and nobody else is either."

"Oh sugar," she said softly, and pressed his thumbs down and into her, letting him feel her heat for him there. "You're all kindsa bad for me." One of his hands moved down to open her knees, the other rested a fist against her sex, knowing she wanted pressure there--knowing she wanted more, too, just not giving it. She met his eyes. "Just not in the ways you think."

He closed his eyes, swallowed, then drew his hand away and slowly closed her legs again. Feeling her like that was doing all kinds of things to his senses, but he still had things to say, and wanted to be able to say them before he couldn't speak coherently at all. Still, not quite able to keep his hands off of her, he settled both hands under her bent knees, stroking the soft flesh there. "I just didn't want us to haveta deal with any of them. Some of them don't like me too much; some of them I just plain confuse. And us--our ages, our past, the way you're just so goddam good and I'm--well, I'm not--they're just not gonna get us, darlin', and I told Chuck as to how I didn't want us ta haveta hear about it from them."

She quirked her mouth. "You should have told him earlier."

His hands suddenly tightened. "What're you talkin' about, Marie?" She shook her head and he pressed harder. "If Slim's been givin' you a hard time I'm gonna take that dicka his an' shove it up his eye--"

"No, not a hard time, Logan," she said, placing steady hands on his shoulders. "He--all of them, really--Scott, Jean, 'Ro--they were just concerned."

"Jean should know better," he muttered darkly.

"Hey," she said, putting her hand under his chin. "They just want to take care of me."

He put her hand back on his shoulder, grasped her hips, and pulled her forward until her knees pressed up against his crotch, until his legs pressed around hers, his thighs almost cradling hers, until her face was inches from his own. "I only want me takin' care of you," he said, his voice a low growl that he tried to contain.

"I know, Logan, but the truth is--it's been so long since anybody actually cared. It's nice having people who are concerned about me, want to know what's going on with me, want to try to help me--even if they can't, can't know, and can't help. I said when I got here that I can take care of myself," she said, and felt him begin to draw away from her. She grabbed his hand. "But I was wrong. I think I was selfish, then, and stupid. I need you to take care of me--I need you to take care of things I didn't even know were wrong with me. I don't need these," she said, placing three pointed fingers between his knuckles. She turned his hand over and touched the cup of his palm, gently. "I need you to touch me. Here, like this, and in my heart, like I was saying earlier. I'll always need that, Logan. It's just nice having other people who come close to trying."

He took her hand, studying it, tracing it, running the pad of his thumb over her pulse. "You ain't never been selfish, Marie," he said finally. She sighed, and he brought her fingers to his lips. "No, baby, I know what you mean." He dropped her hand and met her eyes, sitting back. "You like it here, huh?"

She nodded. He stood up, apparently still restless. "I wantcha ta move into my room," he said suddenly, turning his back to her and moving over toward his single, small window. "I wanna sleep with you, next to you. I wanna wake up with you. I want your things with my things and I want you in here and I want you mine," he said, finishing in a growled rush, still not turning.

She felt her mouth open, her eyes growing a little wider in surprise. "Is this--is this what you wanted to talk to me about? Before we--before--"

"Yeah. What, no good?" he said, turning around. "You want me in your room?" He shrugged. "Whichever, I don't care."

His nonchalance was completely feigned, and she had never seen Logan pretend anything before. She realized, that for perhaps the first--and only--time in her life, she was seeing the Wolverine nervous. It touched her, that he wanted to get it straightened out before they slept together, that he wanted to make sure she would know that he wanted them to have a relationship--an immediately incredibly close one--not just sex.

It touched her also--in a deep, painful way--that he wasn't already completely sure what she would say, that he hadn't known without doubt that what she wanted from him was going to be a whole lot more than just every night--which was a lot to begin with in the first place, now that she thought about it. He still didn't think of himself as she thought of him, still didn't think enough of himself to believe she would actually care. It was partly her fault, partly because she needed time--they both needed time--to show each other what they could be to each other.

So she only said, her voice low, "Sure sugar. I'm moving in with you. I packed my stuff up earlier today to bring over here."

She saw his body answer to that, saw his eyes, too, suffuse with both love and desire. "Marie."

She stood, giving him a sultry smile. "You just gotta be sure you want all my little smelly things in your shower."

"I want you in my shower," he said huskily, stepping toward her.

"And you gotta be sure you want my hair all over your room."

"I want you all over my room," he said, touching her waist. "Everywhere," he specified roughly, pressing her against him, running his hands along her back, pulling her shoulder blades back to make her back arch and her hips thrust forward.

"And you gotta be sure you don't steal my sheets."

"God baby," he growled. "I want you in my sheets."

She leaned back and took his face in her hands. "Good, sugar, because I'm gonna be there every morning."

He kissed her, roughly, his tongue flicking out to lick her lips and then to bite them, and then at last to take them, to savage her mouth with his tongue and show her it belonged there as much as she belonged in his bed. He stopped, leaving her gasping, his own breath coming hot and hard into her mouth. "You're gonna be there soon, darlin'," he muttered against her lips.

She caught her breath and suddenly her bruised mouth curled into a wolfish smile that was, in fact, all hers. "You keep saying soon, sugar. Can't you tell I want it now?"

He growled again, a deep thing that at last ended in a chuckle. "Yeah, darlin', I can tell," he said significantly, and cupped his hand between her legs.

She swallowed, and her hands moved up his chest to the top button of his shirt. She undid them quickly, the idea of being able to touch his bare chest, the idea of being able to touch him at all, both exciting and frightening her. He had touched her in a sexual way several times now, but she had never gotten to do it back--not, really, until tonight. It had taken a great deal of courage for her to simply tug on his belt as she had earlier that day, and both of them knew it.

She wanted to be able to touch him, to explore him, to help him, to please him, because in so many ways, her being able to do that would at last fulfill desires that had been stirred up in her in the atrocity that had been forced on them so long ago. "Logan," she breathed, pressing her lips to his to seek assurance. Her hands skated lightly over the now open shirt, opening it further little by little. "Logan. Show me how. Please." She moved her lips to his ear and murmured there. "I want to touch you. I want you to show me how, Logan."

She didn't say it for his benefit, but this was the focal point of many of his fantasies--her touching him, her asking to touch him, her asking him to teach her and him doing so, showing her, tutoring her, guiding her hands, making her all the more his by knowing she knew only what pleased him and not any other man. This was part of what made him draw her hands away. "No, darlin'. Not this time."

She caught her lower lip in her teeth and he shut his eyes against the sight, against her eyes, which were a little hurt, a little questioning, but would never protest. "If you start--God, baby, if I started to show you how I wouldn't be able to stop showin' you even if you wanted me to."

"I wouldn't ever want you to stop," she said, pushing closer and resting her head against his shoulder.

Dear sweet God, the things she said to him. How could she even say that? How could she know? If he let this tenuous control slip for just a moment . . . His hand brushed her scalp and pressed her head into him, treasuring her for saying the things she said, for making him feel more like a man. "I want it to be all about you this time, darlin'," he said finally. "Baby, I need it to be. For me." He needed to show her how good he could be for her, how good he could make her feel--but he needed it because he needed to show himself; he needed to show himself he deserved her, that he could put her first, that he could make it good for her.

She nodded, understanding. "'Kay, sugar, but remember I've gotta whole lotta touching stored up for you--just you."

"Later."

"Soon."

"Yeah," he said, unfastening the clasp at the top of her blouse. "Real soon." She reached up to undo the rest of the little clasps down the top half of her shirt, but his hand covered her own. "Just let me, baby. Let me undress you."

She breathed in sharply and shook as she let him. Logan wasn't a man who'd ever really liked buttons, but he unfastened them, finally, and took her shirt off. He paused, hand running down her throat and then down between her breasts, suddenly catching on the tags that never left her. "I need you naked," he said at last. "All of you," he swallowed, and lifted the tags from around her neck.

She knew, perhaps even better than he did, why this time he wanted it to be all about her. This would echo what had happened before, but this time both of them would want it, body and soul. That's what he meant, she knew, by him saying he wanted her bare, by him taking the tags. It had less to do with taking off all her clothes and much more to do with redemption. They could never start afresh; there was too much between them for that, but he wanted to deserve her now, wanted to prove to himself that he could be a man for her, not the animal in the name on those tags. He would not touch her with guilt or shame, with the message in that name and number staring him in the face.

He went over to his dresser, and with one last final look at them, he tossed the tags into the drawer, and closed it. She knew he would never wear them again unless he lost her, and she planned on that never happening. He walked back over to her and touched the spot between her breasts, near her heart, where the tags had hung. "I won't ever leave you, not for any length of time that matters," he said at last, knowing that the tags had been his promise to return.

And I won't ever let you, she thought. You're not going to be alone any more. She slithered her hands into his shirt and leaned up to kiss him.

He finished undressing her, his hands seeming to be everywhere, and then he carried her to his bed and laid her gently down. His fingers dipped between her legs but did not stay, feeling that she was already ready for him but wanting to prolong the experience, wanting to touch her scalp as he sifted his hands through her hair, wanting to gently touch her nipples with his teeth, wanting to make her twist, writhe, positively beg for him.

In the end, the thing she said to end his temptation of her and finally get him inside of her was much better than begging. The length of him was pressed along side of her, his shoulders already half leaning over her. He dragged his erection once, across her hip, letting her feel the liquid at the head, letting her feel how hard she made him. She gasped, a small, muffled cry that he smiled at as she bit down on her lip to stop it, and turned wide eyes toward him. "I've never done this, you know. Not with anyone else, besides you."

That did all sorts of things to him. It made him wild, that no man had touched her before; he hadn't liked to think about it but he had assumed she had--living on the road, who wouldn't? Sometimes, especially for a woman, it could be bad--but sometimes it could be good, it could protect you, it could keep you warm, it could save you from being lonely. For these reasons he would never have asked nor minded. But she hadn't, and it made him viciously proud of himself in a way he was vaguely aware he shouldn't be, but he didn't care.

But his ego aside, it also did strange things to his soul, twisting it up and spitting it out. Her first time had been with him in a dirty metal box with unseen people watching; her virginity and innocence had been ripped out of her amidst filth and blood and the sordid implication of rape, even if it hadn't taken place--she had never felt how good it could be, how beautiful it could be, how right it could be for both people, and she had picked him to show her. He, after all that, was the one she wanted, and it made him love her so bad it hurt. It made him realize he could never deserve her and never survive without her.

So in the end, all he said was, "I need you," and he entered her with very little pain on her part, and she was tight and slick and warm for him and it made him want to simply release himself, make her his in the most animalistic way possible. And yet he would not, and even now he waited, looking down into eyes that were wide and soft and brown.

The feel of him inside of her was exquisitely unusual, and she knew that a part of him ached to simply lose control, and also knew that he did not yet trust himself enough to do that, did not care enough about himself to think he was worthy of that. It was enough, for now. Here, now, was redemption. Here, now, she could give him back his name at last, and she did: "I want you, Logan."


	18. Touch Back

They did not advertise themselves, but they did not hide it either. But even if she had not moved all of her things into his room the next morning, there was one very simple way to tell that something had changed between the resident badass and the girl with formerly untouchable skin: she touched him. She kept touching him, any chance she got, just little touches that were normal between any pair of lovers, but not normal for the girl who didn't shake hands, the girl who jumped a foot if someone came to close, the girl for whom handing over things like pens and books was a carefully orchestrated task.

Most of the residents of the mansion had learned shortly after the team that she had learned to control her gift--mostly because she stopped wearing gloves, even though she didn't announce it. But almost everyone was still startled to see the way she touched him--both because they weren't used to her touching anyone and because the Wolverine had a feral sense of personal space, and in general scared the shit out of anyone who invaded it without his permission.

"I like that," he said later, when they were back in his room. She had moved into his room that morning, and then he had let her sleep most of the day because he knew that last night was the first night she'd ever spent like that, but they had had supper downstairs among far too many eyes for his taste. Still, there was consolation: "I like that the first time they see ya touchin' someone, it's me you're touchin'."

"Do you sugar?" she said, putting her hands on his chest and leaning in. Seeing the latent hunger in him flare up at her actions, she swallowed, smile falling away, and let him see the answering hunger in her eyes. "Are you going to let me touch you _now_?"

Hell yes. "Sure, darlin', if that's what you want."

Suddenly she slipped her hand down, into his pants, and gripped him, not knowing how to hold him, but knowing he was hard and knowing it felt good and knowing, somehow, that it felt good for him, too. "Surely you have a better answer than that, sugar. Seems to me," she said, licking her lips, "you want it too."

He closed his eyes, head back, willing himself to say what he had to say. "Hell yes, darlin', I want it. I want it real bad," he hissed as her hand moved, and he caught her wrist in an iron grip. "I just don't wanna rush you none."

She shook her head. "I want to, Logan, please. Show me."

His eyes snapped open, deep, dark black, and he growled. He met her soft, earnest gaze, and blinked, loosening his grip on her hand. Then he almost smiled. "It might help if you opened up my pants first, darlin'."

Her eyes widened, and then her hands went swiftly to his belt, fumbling with the buckle, the button, the zipper. He struggled to keep his hands from steadying hers, from ripping hers away and making the task quick and efficient. He liked her eagerness; he liked her uncertainty; he liked the fact that she'd never done this before--but it was sweet torture, waiting like this, and he would have preferred to take care of it himself.

And yet he knew how much she wanted this, knew how the idea of undressing him and touching him would make him hers in a way he wasn't yet, at least to her mind. He knew that being able to pleasure him in this way--not the way in which they both shared, both gave to each other, but in this way that would be merely her giving to him, her pleasuring him--would make her feel like a woman in the ways that doing what he had done for her, both then and now, had made him feel like a man. He couldn't deny her that. He knew that she too, needed a redemption of things past.

That didn't change the fact that she was still fumbling with his pants and it was driving him crazy. "Off," he said mildly.

She blinked and jerked the jeans off of his hips, and he desperately restrained himself from settling his hands on her hips and fitting himself into her. She looked him over, as if trying to decide something, biting her lip. Her expression was agonizing; the little chewed-on lip excruciating. His shirt still covered most of his erection, but it was not something he was used to, pants down before a woman and letting her decide what would happen next. It took every ounce of will he had to give her this, and his voice was tight as he tried to say offhandedly, "You're killin' me here, darlin'."

"Your shirt," she said simply, and quickly undid the little buttons all the way down and pulled it off. Her eyes, however, were not on her task but his straining erection, and when he became fully revealed to her, her full lips parted, her scent suddenly spiking sharply in the air.

Despite the tension in him the lazy, satisfied smile of a predator roamed over his face. "Like what you see, darlin'?"

She had seen it all before, last night, but not like this, not simply open to her scrutiny and waiting for her to touch him. "Yes," she breathed. "Oh yes, Logan."

He had expected her to tease him back, not give him this earnest answer, and the sweet sincerity of her reply almost frightened him, because he knew that anything she asked in this moment he would do for her, and he didn't like anyone having that kind of power over him.

And yet he let her explore him, tracing a cord of his neck, tickling the tight muscle of his stomach, stroking his lower back and dipping lower. Her small teeth nipped at his neck, then his nipple, then he wished he hadn't let her. But then she ran a fingernail along hard, rigid flesh and for a moment all thought left him completely, regret and all. Then she sank down to the floor in front of him and began to pull his jeans the rest of the way off, and he leaned against the wall as she pulled them off his feet.

It was agony, having her there kneeling between his legs. In so many ways, their position was if it was reversed--as if she stood above him and he knelt to her, as he had three times before--each time momentous and sure to resonate through the rest of his existence. Once again she held power over him--the ability to bring him to his knees in his own way by making him fall apart with pleasure, and the ability to reject that. Once again it was as if he sought forgiveness, because he would never have submitted himself in this way to another woman; he never had before. He always had control of the situation; he created both pain and pleasure; there was no touching, no exploring, no gentleness. He gave this to her because he owed it to her, and loved her, and wanted to show her that he could accept her control, and thus, in even this, too, he could be a man.

He did not consider these things in so many words. He only considered her mouth, the full sweetness of her lips, first as she looked up at him, then as she began to nip, lick, and bite at his inner thighs, at his highly sensitized flesh, then as she ran the flat of her tongue once, quickly along his length and caught the liquid at the head in her mouth. She looked at him again, but still his eyes remaining fixed on her lips, not only with desire but an incredible need and a doubt that hurt her heart. She nuzzled her face between his legs, wanting to bury herself there, because his expression pained her and she couldn't seem to ever give him enough, couldn't seem to give him the confidence and the trust that he had given her when he had first been forced to use her.

At last she wrapped her lips around him, because she knew he wanted it, and because she wanted it too--wanted to give him this pleasure, wanted to make it happen in him, wanted to control it and manipulate it, because in the end being able to give was what had made her feel like a woman, not being able to take. She took him in her mouth and met his eyes, begging him to show her how to do it. He wrapped his hands in her hair, tangling them, taking fistfuls of it, and guided her, thrusting into her mouth with heat, but also with control over himself. She loved the taste of him there, the heavy fullness of him in her mouth; she loved the look in his eyes as he slowly guided her face--the acceptance there, of her love.

In so many ways, this was the final echo of what had been done to them so long ago. He had touched her again as he had that day, and in her wanting and loving him he had at last been allowed to feel like a man, and with this chance to touch him and make him feel this way in return she could feel whole. He felt this rumble through him as she made him hers with her mouth; he felt it as she raked her nails down the sides of his thighs. He felt it when she viciously resisted him as he tried to pull away her head so he could come.

It shattered him, that she would want the taste of him in her mouth, that she would want him in her mouth at all, that she would want him in her deepest darkest places as she had taken him last night. It shattered him and it frightened him, because this loss of control brought the animal. That terrible day six years ago had been the only ounce of light in the darkness of that place, because he had been a man that day, when for years after and before he had been an animal. She wanted that man, not the other thing he was.

This act, perhaps, was final proof that he could do it. His hands guided her, but they did not control her, except in that final moment when he had wanted to give her the chance to pull away. When she at last released him and licked her lips, looking up at him with a wicked gleam in her eye, he had sank down to his knees beside her in a sort of triumphant defeat. At last she was not over him and he was not over her but they were there, one, together.


	19. Respective Auras

In the months that followed, it turned out that no one gave them that much trouble.

Ororo was truly happy for them. She was a human lightning rod who knew something of electricity, who could sense the energy cackling between the two of them in a connection that was stronger than electrical magnetism. Scott disapproved, but did not voice it, and left off glaring and hackles raising one day when Jean shot a thought at him that said something to the effect of: "Stop being so protective of Rogue. You're making me jealous, and your aggressive attitude and protective instincts are making me so wet I can't concentrate on anything." That night saw action in more than Logan and Marie's room.

Jean herself merely stayed away from the two of them, finding that it wasn't just Scott's sudden bellicosity that was turning her on, finding that being in the vicinity of the Wolverine and his mate was difficult. Even if she hadn't been able to read minds, the heat running between them was obvious, and she was both ashamed of her immediate reactions to the way he looked at Rogue, and embarrassed that so much of their feelings were palpable to her in their respective auras. She wanted to leave that private between them, both because she thought it should be and because that love and need between them was so strong it hurt her heart.

The professor was much better able to deal with their relationship. He seemed to approve, even, and even, to a small extent, seemed to understand, because he never asked any questions, except for one which was for Rogue and Rogue alone: did she want to join the team?

Logan said no and Marie said she'd think about it, and later Logan had bristled and said, "That selfish bastard. He knew that that bein' a hero and helpin' people out crap would appeal to you."

Marie placed her hands flat on his chest and smiled. "I think it appeals to you, too."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "I just like beatin' people up."

She laughed and tucked her head under his chin. "I think you like saving the world with Scott every chance you get." Her smile fell away and she stroked his chest. "I think it helps you to come back to me."

His hand idled in her hair. "That's what I like about you, darlin'," he said finally. "Sometimes I think you know me better'n I know myself--and the man you know sure is a helluva lot better than the man _I_ know." He tipped back her chin with his hand and looked into her eyes. Finally he said softly, "Ya make me feel good, darlin'."

She sucked in her breath. It'd been several months since she'd started living in his room, but there'd been missions and business, and she still had school, which both of them considered important, even though it irked her that she had study and classes when she wanted to be with him, and she felt every moment as if she didn't have enough time with him. "You gonna let me make you feel even better, sugar?" she asked, smiling up at him.

She still asked him things like that, and meant them--asked to get down on her knees in front of him, asked to take him into her mouth, asked to touch him, partly because she liked teasing him and partly because she knew that he needed that ounce of control. "Baby," he said, threading a hand through her hair, "you know I'll letcha do anythin' ya want with me."

And the admission always cost him, but he always made it, and so now he grit his teeth, waiting, and tried not to think of the sweet little things her hands were doing to him as she tugged his jeans down around his hips. He tried to think of her sitting in the gardens earlier that day; he thought about the way she still wore gloves sometimes because she knew it turned him on; he thought about how comfortable she was with the other people here and how she never minded publicly showing her affection for him; he thought about a mutant he didn't know, hunted, and Jean and Scott and 'Ro already in the office and Chuck's voice--

Shit.

"You gotta stop, baby."

She had just begun to reach for him, and now her hands fell away as she met his eyes. She read what was there, and sighed. "A mission?"

He pulled his jeans back around his hips and snapped them, wishing they were not so painfully tight now. 'Ro and Jean'd certainly get an eyeful, him having to leave here as hard as he was, but there wasn't much he could do about it now. "Yeah, darlin'. Believe me, for anythin' else--"

"You wouldn't leave. I know, sugar. I like you going off to save the world, remember? I just--I kinda wanna go with you."

He moved to her swiftly and took his face in her hands. "Don't say that. Not now, baby. We can talk about it later--I meant what I said when I said I'd letcha do whatever ya want--but don't say that right now when I'm gonna have to go on a mission. I don't even wanna have to think about you bein' with me, not yet."

"I know, Logan," she said, covering his hands with her own. "It's going to be hard. We'll talk later." Her mouth began to curve in a slow smile. "I got something better to say to leave you with, sugar." She leaned into his ear, whispering. "I'll be right here, waiting, when you get back, and we can finish what we started."

Heat and hunger flared in his eyes. "God darlin'. You shouldn'ta said that either." He squeezed her hands, once, and left.

* * *

She started awake when he came back; dawn was curling up into the sky and little day things were beginning to wake up outside. She pulled her robe around her and stood, taking him in--still in uniform, slightly bloody, stinking of sweat and looking at her with both exhaustion and longing in his eyes. Questions coursed through her, but finally she said only, "Bad?"

"Yeah." He tugged at the back of his uniform. She helped him find the zipper and pulled, stripping him because a killing rage was still hot within him and he couldn't seem to shed the hated leather fast enough. When he got it off he said nothing, and simply walked away from her into the bathroom, turning on the water in the shower full spray and letting the water run over him.

Marie stood in their room for only a moment, then followed. She knew he wanted time alone to control himself. She didn't care.

He did not acknowledge her, and she did not say anything. They did not need to do these things. She simply opened the shower and stepped inside, wrapping her arms gently around his waist from behind him, pressing her cheek against his back as he looked up with closed eyes into the steaming spray of water. After several moments of simply standing like that, her fingers raised to gently try to ease out the pressure between his shoulder blades, and he turned, drawing her into his arms in an embrace that had nothing to do with anything besides re-establishing self. "Marie," he said simply, neither of them needing to say more, his hands running over her wet body and her own merely pulling him closer.

"Marie," he said again, his voice changed, and guided her gently to step back, against the wall of the shower. She looked at him, eyes unfocused with desire, but not needy so much as accepting. His movements mirrored that look--not quick or desperate, merely taking, allowing her to comfort him in this basic way and in so many deeper ways that he could never explain. He entered her and treasured the small sound she made, treasured the slickness of her, treasured the way he could take her like this, up against the wall, the way it was beautiful for them in any way, at any time. He had her arching and mewling his name before he came inside of her, and then they both sagged against the wall, his head beside hers, letting the shower wash away the sweat, their ragged breathing slowing.

She nipped his shoulder, and said finally, "Go to bed, sugar," and then he did. She curled up into him and beside him, watching him sleep, treasuring the way he let himself take comfort in her, treasuring the way he held her to him so tightly, even in sleep, treasuring the thought, though it was painful, that there was still more that she could give him.

* * *

The mission had been to save a mutant girl from the sort who would hunt her down just because she was different; and it had been made more complex by the fact that the Brotherhood used this prejudice of humans as a recruiting technique. Logan didn't talk about it. They never did, and she never felt the need to. That night, after the afternoon had passed and a subdued meal had taken place downstairs, he got himself a beer and watched her, instead of picking up where they had been the night before.

"Let me," he said finally, from where he sat in his chair. He set his beer aside and looked at her, his eyes practically scorching her in the dim light.

"What?" she said, uncertain, hair brush faltering against the side of her head.

"I said let me do it."

"You really want to br--"

"Yes." She took several deep breaths and walked over to him, hips swaying, and sat down before him, between his legs, her back to him. She gave him her brush and he wrapped his fist around the handle, and then, very gently, began to brush her hair. His breathing quickened, watching the silky flow of it as he lifted the brush away, spreading some of her hair on his thighs and fingering it there, as if he couldn't resist feeling what he saw. "I ain't never done this for anyone before," he said finally.

Her eyes were closed as she let her head droop, feeling him follow the lines of her hair down across her nape and over her back. "I know," she said softly, pressing her lips together, trying to resist the sweet ache the fact that he actually wanted to do this for her produced in her.

"I like it," he said at last. "I like watchin' you and I like doin' it. I _want_ ta do it." He set the brush down and then both of his hands sank into her hair, stroking her scalp, running her hair through his fingers again and again. "I wanna be able to do it any time. I wanna share the little things with you."

"You can do it any time you like, sugar." She chuckled softly. "We already do. We're already like some old married couple."

His hands stilled in her hair; everything in him stilled. Suddenly she was afraid she'd said the wrong thing, until she heard his voice. "I wanna be married."

Her breath caught strangely in her and her chest tightened. "Sugar?" she faltered.

His voice was flat behind her. "Why's it surprisin', Marie? You know how I want you."

She turned around, moving so she knelt between his legs. Her hand found his cheek, gently rubbing over it, through his whiskers, as if making sure he was still there. "Yes, Logan, I know. But--I guess because where I'm from, there're all these girls who--well, that's all they want. It's never all I wanted, but it's a real big deal--"

"I know that," he said sharply, eyes darkening.

"I know you know, sugar," she said gently, soothing his suddenly defensive expression. Her hand dropped slowly to trace his lips, and she swallowed. "I just didn't think you'd want it 'cause it's so built up like that, you know?"

He caught her hand and pulled it away from his lips, stopping it's movement altogether, his movement rough and forceful. His question was equally so. "Do you want it, Marie?"

Her mouth fell open because she seemed to be having trouble breathing. "Yes," she said at last, her voice small. "Yes, I always hoped . . . I never wanted a big poofy dress, or people seeing, or cake or presents or any of that . . . Really I just wanted there to be someone I'd want to do it with, and who felt the same way about me. I want that. I already have that, with you."

He dropped her hand and touched her hair, not with gentleness now, but control, a control of the many things building and burning behind his eyes. "There're parts of it I like. The 'in sickness and in health' thing. How it'd be forever and just between you and the me, and no one else can change it." He paused, his hand tightening in her hair. "I really like that part about how you gotta belong to me." His eyes moved away from hers, becoming fixed on her hair, and he spoke with effort. "I like the part 'bout how it says I gotta belong to you, too."

She gave him a sultry smile that he didn't see. "I bet you like that whole 'honor and obey' thing, too, don'tcha sugar?" she said, placing her hands on his thighs and running them slowly up. He didn't reply, apparently fascinated by the play of his hands in her hair. Her smile fell away and then she stilled, looking up at him. "I already belong to you, Logan."

His hand threaded up and tightened against her scalp and using that he drew her head up, so that her lips were right near his and his breath was hot in her face. "I just wanted you to know," he growled out, and then he loosened her a little and said more gently, "Wanted us to know, that we were like that, married, even if we don't have some guy saying it."

She bit her lip. "I don't need some guy saying it."

He pulled her up and into him, straddling her thighs across his hips so that he could hold her closer, so that she could feel the hardness her closeness produced pressing into her. "I wanted you to know, because I want to leave. With you."

"Sugar--"

He stopped her speech by bucking her hips lightly against him. "I know ya like it here. I know this place is good for ya. I know it's selfisha me. But I gotta place way up north in the middle of nowhere, with lotsa woods and lotsa snow, and I want you there. I want you all alone, up, away from everythin', just mine, just me lookin' at you, touchin' you, feelin' you--"

"Sugar," she said, this time stopping _him_ by grinding her hips back down, by leaning in and biting the lobe of his ear. "When do we leave?"

"Jesus, darlin'," he growled, his hands convulsing once to clutch her tighter, then subsiding. "Jesus darlin'," he said again, this time almost weakly, "the things you say."

"I'm told I've got a skillful tongue," she said, whispering in his ear. Then she relaxed against him and let him hold her, let him know. It still saddened her, that he'd be the least bit uncertain about what she'd say, that he'd have the least doubt earlier when he'd asked if she wanted to be married. She wanted to convince him, wanted him to think enough of himself that'd he'd know things like that, wanted the strength to show him. Maybe his quiet place in the woods would give it to her. "I want it too, Logan," she said simply. "I want to be alone with you--and I'm selfish, too. I don't want you to have to go away on missions when I'm about to make love to you. I'm still considering being on the team and I still definitely want to finish school--"

"We'll come back," he interjected. "I just wanna have some place that's our own, just our own, just my little place in the middle of nowhere where you can be all mine. If we have that place, too, darlin' we can come back here and live here and even stay here if that's what you want. This place--well, it's the most at-home place I've ever been in, and it can be ours, too. Hell, I even kinda care what happens to the people here."

"Sure sugar. You just want to take care of Scott, make sure he doesn't stick his head up his own ass and make sure he still deserves his woman."

He shrugged. "Sure I want Jeannie to be happy. 'Ro too, 'cause she deserves it. And even that crazy Jubes of yours, 'cause she's funny as hell. But I only got one woman to take care of," he said, running his hands up her back and squeezing her shoulder blades. "One that's mine. One that I want." His hands loosened as he looked at her eyes. "I don't have a ring, darlin."

She raised her brow in an expression borrowed from him. "I think it's what we're not wearing that really matters, sugar," she said, playful, knowing that they'd talked seriously enough for one night, knowing that having her on his lap like this had been steadily increasing his desire such that now it was almost painful for him. She unbuckled his belt and opened his jeans, and bent back from him to take off her shirt.

"Yeah darlin," he growled, watching her reveal herself to him, watching her unhook her bra and spill free before him. He placed the tips of two fingers between her breasts, where his tags had once rested. "What we're not wearing."


	20. Human Behavior

It was odd; Marie had thought Logan wanted to be here because it would be peaceful.

For her, it was. Logan had been quite literal; it really was the middle of nowhere. Civilization couldn't be reached for miles; he didn't even have electricity or running water, which he had realized abruptly when he'd stepped in the door. For himself, he hadn't thought about it, because he was used to it, but for her--well, he wanted her to have hot water--if a little selfishly, because those long, hot baths often made her good and ready for him.

But she'd been able to convince him it was fine, even as he stood in the door contemplating what to do--one of the main factors in her persuasion being that even with his regenerative powers he didn't want to make the exhausting drive back out there for a good long time (the other factor being her proving that she could also get good in ready for him in a dark, freezing cold cabin that they hadn't even bothered to move their stuff into yet, hot baths be damned).

The cabin was a single room with a large fireplace and a small window that looked over a barren landscape of trees and rather rocky land that stretched out for miles. She'd asked him why he'd chosen this area in particular--even in these northern reaches there were lower spots, more hospitable, but he'd only looked away and shrugged. She just figured it was where he'd landed, where he'd suddenly decided he wanted a place--and what the Wolverine wanted he got pretty damn soon. Strangely, she grew to love the place, love the hardness of it, the emptiness of it, the way the trees reached tall and selfish into the sky, seeming to bear endless burdens with silence, grace, and peace.

The snow was not yet heavy, but there was the smell and taste of it in the air, and what was there blanketed their reduced world with something fine and yet solid. She liked it; she always had, mostly because in Mississippi--especially in those weeks before she got away--the heat had seemed not only heavy but holding a thousand years of history tumbling on top of each other. When she'd left she'd wanted to start over, with nothing behind her, and the cold freshness of snow had let her, after a fashion. She especially liked it now, being here with him. He liked it too, if only because she liked it, liked laughing at her when she made snow angels, liked the way she wasn't afraid to pelt him with snow balls, especially liked the way her warm red tongue would dip out to catch snowflakes and meet his own mouth instead.

But he didn't enjoy walking in it, at least not with her. In fact, he seemed to want to spend her every waking hour in the little cabin he had for them. He went out in the early mornings while she slept in, his healing factor making him need less rest, and also some measure of experience of things past making him less exhausted with the active nights they spent together. She had known he needed that time alone in the almost darkness of the forest, and would always give it to him. She was pleased that he wanted to spend her waking hours with her in the cabin--because if they were in that cabin together and she was awake he was generally touching her--touching her in front of the warm, blazing fire, touching her in a casual way that would suddenly get her blood up, touching her in a very explicit way, all the way from the inside out.

But then, besides the fact that the whole staying inside thing was making her a little crazy, she began to grow rather concerned. Logan was possessive, but he wasn't the sort of person to keep a woman locked up. It wasn't a matter of letting her out, not in any way. She went out when she wanted and did what she wanted--usually spent time watching snow fall and tearing through places no feet had touched, because she loved seeing her mark on the snow.

But what she wanted was their mark on the snow, them walking together, them being in this glorious space together--but when she walked out, he never followed. It was difficult walking alone, knowing he was prowling in front of their fire, heat in his gaze and step, waiting for her to return--always making it good and worth it when she did, but with an intensity that made her wonder. When she asked him to join her he shrugged and did, and that made her ask only very rarely, because when he came he seemed tense, and she didn't like him being that way at all, especially with her.

His discomfort wasn't with the outside world--not exactly, in any case. It changed him; she could see that the minute they'd arrived and he'd stepped out of his truck after several days of driving straight. He'd stood there, and something had risen up in him. There was nothing in Logan that had ever really been undefined, but had there been, he lost it just then; his features, his every muscle, his finally tuned senses--all had seemed to sharpen and tighten. He had always had the lazy grace of a predator, but in the past couple of months she'd seen that grace lengthen into the stance of a creature satiated, as if it had just been extremely well-fed--only dangerous when provoked. But when she had first met him her thought had been animal, predator--but he had seemed, then, not as if he was engaged in the hunt but merely hyper-aware and wary, a cat making its way through its territory and sensing neither prey nor foe, not yet.

But now all that was gone and this was merely wolfish--killer grace without ease or satisfaction, now engaged in a hunt so dangerous it was neither sure whether it was the hunter or the hunted. It frightened her a bit, seeing all that flash in his eyes when they arrived, and then he had gone to the cabin, opened the door, and growled a curse and muttered he was sorry baby, but she wasn't gonna have a place to plug in that stupid hair dryer of hers and how come he hadn't thought about it earlier? The wolfishness was gone, the tense, unbending stance slipped away, making love to her in the cabin--but she had sensed it again when he went out, and each time he came in from being out there.

She knew that there was peace in it for him, too--that the sudden coiling of all his senses when he was out there wasn't unusual to nature. She knew he liked feeling himself sink into that, the scheme of things, and liked especially that he was on top of it all--the food chain and everything else there was to control. But he didn't like letting her see it; when he was with her he had both the violent instinct to protect her physically from whatever he felt hunted him out there, and the feral sense to hide himself spiritually and not show her these things that were going on in his mind.

She was walking with him--again, because she had asked, not being able to stand being alone and hoping that this time she might convince him to share this place with her--both what it was to her and what it was to him. But he walked only with the same tense guardedness with which he had before, and she accepted it and tried to cheer him up by showing him how bad her aim was with a snowball and pointing out the little tracks of wild rabbits in the snow. She followed a little forest trail that way, and he followed her, resigned, silent--sulky, she thought, wishing he would share everything with her, not just the good things he thought she might like.

Suddenly his nostrils flared, his step quickening, as if somehow--if it were actually, in fact, mutantly possible--his senses flared even more, and he seemed as if he suddenly sensed everything, could move silently along the path without breaking step or a single twig, his muscles moving lithely with a grace that was almost liquid. She fell behind, following less skillfully, and so it was only after him that she sighted the suddenly enormous rocks, spiking suddenly between the trees and marking mountains that began to rise behind them, crooking at angles that revealed a series of caves.

"Logan?" she asked, tugging a twig out of her hair and rubbing gloved hands together in the cold.

He did not reply. He stood, his back to her, strain evident even across the broad line of his shoulders. She touched his arm gently and he grabbed her wrist, his other hand reaching for her throat, before he stopped himself and seemed to realize it was her. He limply dropped her hand and she molded herself against him, pressing herself into his hard muscles, trying to give him comfort in the give of her flesh. "Logan, please. Please tell me what's wrong," she said, completely unfazed and unafraid of his reaction, how he had grabbed her, perfect trust in her voice.

His head drooped beside hers, eyes closed, but slowly, wearily, he settled his hands in his usual position on her hips and drew her in, tightly, burying his lips in her hair, in the soft, boneless skin of her neck. "I lived here for two years," he said finally, his voice barely above a choked whisper. "Right there," he said, gesturing blindly to the flat ground in the clearing before the rocks started, "is where I first stood on two feet again."

She wanted to tell him don't; she wanted to tell him stop it, she didn't need to hear it--but she wanted to hear it, desperately she wanted to, almost as desperately as she wanted to sit down right now and weep for him with everything she had. And so finally she pushed herself closer to him, as if she could make herself hold him completely, and said very steadily, making her voice strong, "Tell me, sugar. Tell me everything. Tell me what they did to you and how it was for you here."

His hand sank around her neck, then slipped up to hold her chin tightly. "I can't."

"You won't," she corrected evenly.

"Don't, Marie. You have no idea what you're dealin' with."

"I don't," she affirmed. "I want to, though."

"You don't want this."

"I do," she said stubbornly, backing away from him, letting anger flare in her eyes for a second.

"Whaddya want, Marie?" he growled, his hand twitching at his side as if he meant to grab her, but was restraining himself. She wanted him to grab her; she wanted him to do what he wanted with her; she realized that this also, this loss of control, is what she wanted from him. "You wanna pity me? You wanna see me humbled? You wanna see me emasculated, is that it?" She knew how much it cost him to say that, knew that the way he snarled it at her was an effort to hide both the weakness of the admission and the painful realization that she might, indeed, see him as a creature to be pitied. He shook his head and folded his hands tightly into fists. "I know you, Marie. I know you don't wanna do that to me," he said at last, his voice dangerous, low.

She wrapped her hands around one of his fists and pulled the back of it to her skin, dragging his knuckles down her throat and then down near her left breast, settling his knuckles at her heart. "What I want," she emphasized, "is for you not to hide yourself from me."

He jerked his knuckles away, knowing that the line she had traced with them hadn't been the idle stroke of a lover but the route he'd used to slaughter someone: down the jugular then around the collar bone and straight into the heart. He'd done it before. "You don't want this part," he growled.

"I do," she said. She drew up his hand again and gently touched his knuckles with lightly stroking fingers, then with little kisses.

He jerked away from her like a wounded animal. "Stop it, Marie. Stop it or I swear to you you're not gonna like what happens--and what we have--this thing we have--it'll be over."

She could not believe he was threatening her. She _knew_ he was not threatening her. He was simply stating the facts, simply saying what would happen--or at least what he believed would happen. This place affected him, calling up the animal, the last reserve of defense against memory and despair, calling up a darkness in him that was ugly, cruel, animalistic, savage. She knew that touching him there in that place was a reminder of what had been done to him, a reminder of how he had lived like an animal for years after he had escaped. It was a reminder of what they had made him into, what they had made him believe of himself, what he had always been--an animal, lurking beneath human skin. She knew that touching him there, combined with being in this place, called that animal so close to the surface that it was itching to break free, and all he could do was struggle to win control.

She did not touch him again, but she opened her hands, her arms, completely open to him. "I want all of you," she said simply. She even wanted that, the darkness and the squalor within him, because it was what gave him the strength after everything he had been through to still be the man she loved. She loved it because even though it was in so many ways a monster, it wanted her; it loved her in the only way it could--terribly and violently, and yet it loved her; it clung to her; it made room inside for her; it allowed there to be a man controlling it when it could so easily take over. "I love you," she said starkly. "I want it all."

His hands slipped toward her neck, but then changed their direction and found her shoulders, gripping her hard, not letting her move. "I'm telling you, Marie, you don't love this. You love the man I am, the man I was for an instant that day they brought you to me." She caught her breath. They rarely spoke of that day; their few twisted conversations had been warped around forgiveness and redemption without ever mentioning above twice the actual fact that they had brought her to him. His hands loosened and his voice was as if ripped from him, raw, hoarse. "You love the man I'll always try to be for you. You deserve no less; I don't _want_ to give you less. Let me be that man for you. Let me, Marie."

She shook her head, summoning what strength was in her, calling up the will she had that those years of searching for him had given her, that these last few months of love and touch had created in her--first by knowing she could be touched, and lately by knowing that she could be loved, wholly and completely, not just despite everything wrong about her but in many ways because of it. He needed this too.

"Sugar, this isn't about that day. We put it behind us; we did all the little things we needed to do to get over it: I touched you and you touched me and we touched each other and we made each other feel so good it hurt sometimes. What happened all those years ago is over. We're not together because of what happened then--that's just how we met. If I've ever made you think the reason I love you is because of how you touched me that day--well sugar, I'm sorry and you're wrong. It's why I looked for you; but that's not all there is to loving you. You've got another side and I've grown to love that, too; I love that even though it's ugly it's only me it wants; I love that it makes the man inside you live and breath and exist. I know you; I've seen your memories, and I know them better than you 'cause you refuse to look at the dark ones. I know you didn't become what you did because you couldn't help yourself, because you lost yourself and went crazy. You became what you did to protect yourself, to protect the man in you, and in the end, to protect that memory of me you had. Because of that it won't ever let itself hurt me, even if it wants to. What moves that part of you is instinct and its greatest instinct somehow got to be not protecting you but protecting me. So when it gets down to what I want--I want that dark side touching me, too; I want it on top of me and I want it inside of me; I want it not hidden away from me and I want--"

"Stop this, Marie. You don't understand." His eyes were black and unreadable, every muscle tense. "You don't want what you're asking for." There was a dangerous tone in his voice.

But she was not afraid. She stepped forward and took his hand and said quietly, "I want this." And then she bent her head, and with a gentle tongue--not teasing or sexual, but simply the flat of her it--began to lap the back of his hand.

"Enough." His voice was practically a roar, but it was quiet, which made it all the more frightening.  
She looked up into his eyes and said what she really wanted, spoke the dark fantasy he didn't knew he had. "I want you, Wolverine."

He manhandled her throat and had her slammed against the sheer wall of rock with a movement that jarred her bones, and his claws shot out with a cold sound that echoed on the rock and he cut down her clothes, just enough for him to get inside her, just enough to get what he needed from her. He took her hard, and it hurt. He took her from behind, and then on the cold, hard ground, hand on her neck, forcing her not to look at him, sharp teeth biting her, hard length filling her.

She could sense his fear and helplessness, the helplessness he hated; she could sense that he hated himself in doing it. She knew that it wouldn't take just this one time to make him understand, or just this day--she knew that they still had so far yet to go--but a peace filled her, knowing that they had come so far already. She showed him, this time--and she would every time after--how much she enjoyed it. She wanted it, wanted to give it to him and wanted to have him, like this, completely and utterly, and she did show him that. And somewhere in the middle he felt a hiss, a quiver, a cry, a sense that he might have damaged her beyond all repair--and it called him out of it, as she had known it would, because the animal loved her too, in it's own way, and would do anything to protect her, even relinquish control to the man.

That man held her now, and kissed her and gulped freezing cold air over and over again, and she held his face and told him that this was good for them, this was good for her, and she wanted him to finish; she wanted him to have her over and over again until he could have no more and then once again so that she would know that she was his and so that he could at last be hers; she wanted Logan and she wanted the animal and she wanted _him_, because he was both. Those simple words--I want you--made him understand at last that she did want him, all of him, that she loved him, and in that moment, he could begin to love himself.

He recovered enough of himself to take them back to the cabin and have her there, and sometimes it was the man and sometimes it was the animal, but it was always him, and that's what she loved. Fear still flooded him when the animal would rise as he was taking her, but she clung to him and they both held on, her with a pleasure that bordered and sometimes mingled with pain and him with a frantic urgency combined with helplessness and fear. But afterwards he could kiss all the sore spots in the light of the fire, and she could tell him once again she loved him and wanted him.

That's what they were over and over and over again in every way possible: pain, his touch, her forgiveness. Some thing are broken only so that they can truly be made right.


End file.
